Just retired from ESA support group - much poorer

paulkearnsmusic

Hi I'm new here,

After breaking my back and suffering the agony of a failed fusion operation (leaving me unable to walk or look after myself and on a cocktail of drugs that make normal life impossible), I've reached retirement age and lost over £50 a week!!

There are 2 reasons my state pension is much lower than my ESA payments.

The first is that, during the 70s, I "opted out" and put my money into a private pension fund which, by my calculations, should be worth around £100,000. But when I started to track this down, it became clear that, despite having paid into this for many years, the company had gone bust and nobody seems able to find out what happened to my money. I've been trying to find this for 5 years now and just seem to go round in circles. I was told at one point that the company I worked for closed and reopened under an almost identical name and "the pension fund was paid to the trustees". Believe it or not, this company was owned and run by my late father and his partner. When he died, he left all but £10 of his £1m estate to my 2 sisters. This has left me with a very large hole in my NI contributions and the realisation that, much as I thought, my father was a complete psychotic b@st@rd

The second is that, despite my condition, I tried to "soldier on" trying to work. I was never able to put enough hours in to earn over the NI threshold - so another hole appeared in my NI contributions.

As a result, my state pension is just over £120 a week - £50 week less than my ESA payment (which made extra payments because of my disability).

I still get the highest rates of DLA - which was awarded for life.

No matter how frugally we try to live, we're losing money every week.

We sold our house and are currently living in our RV - which means our current savings are pretty high - certainly well over the current "threshold".
Our intentions were to live in the RV and take our time to find the "right" place to suit my disability in which to see our days out. This plan would seem to be in disarray thanks to the misappropriation of my private pension and the fact that disabled pensioners are somehow "worth less" than they were before their 65th birthday.

This would appear to rule out pension credits as they seem to think that one can somehow "earn" £1 a week for every £500 one has in the bank. I am aware that the house funds can be ignored for up to 6 months - but this time limit is about to run out.

I wrote and explained this to the DWP who quickly replied, telling me that I might be able to claim NI credits for the years I was earning under the threshold prior to my ESA claim.
Problem is that I thought my email to the DWP was a request to do this, but their reply may as well have been written in Swahili for all the use it was!

Short of attempting to sue my late father's estate (which has not yet been fully distributed - which, bearing in mind that the records from that time probably don't exist, would be very difficult to prove), I can see our "house money" just being used up in living expenses or my using a good deal of it "buying" some extra years of NI contributions - which would only get me £14 a week better off.

I just get the feeling that, despite doing a lot of things right, between legislation and the hubris of my late father, I've now got to use up our house money to live on - and we're going to be stuck in our RV for the rest of our lives.

It's bad enough having to live with the pain, the side effects and limitations of what happened to me. Sometimes, I feel it would be a lot easier for everyone if I just "wasn't here" any more.

I'm sorry it's a complicated post but, I've used as few words up as possible to try and explain our position.

If anyone has any ideas as to what I might be able to do, I would be very grateful.

Thanks for listening

Paul.

PS - we tried carers allowance. We were told that yes, we qualify but no, being a pensioner, we didn't actually get any money. We have and underlying right - which is nice to know - but totally useless.

pmlindyloo

What is stopping you from finding a house/bungalow to live in? Do you not have sufficient savings?

If you don't then have you considered shared ownership/over 60s housing/mobile home/renting?

Have you done some googling to see what housing is available for your age group?

You need to make some kind of decision about your housing situation as your savings will just decrease and make it more difficult for you to find your own place.

If you bought somewhere then you should be eligible for Pension Credit. Your wife could claim Carer's Allowance but she wouldn't be paid it but you would get a Carer's Premium added to your PC - worth about £36 per week. With your high rates of DLA you should be able to live a reasonable standard of living - you would get all of your council tax paid too if you were on guarantee Pension Credit plus dental costs etc.

I understand how fed up you are about other money matters but you really do need to do something now and get on with living your lives.

[Deleted User]

OP you could never opt out of N.I. you could contract out, an entirely different thing which should have given you more SRP.
Have you tried the DWP's pension tracing service, worked well for me to trace a pension that had been taken over by trustees.
https://www.gov.uk/find-pension-contact-details