State Pension spouse entitlements

molerat

Barry_Bear said:

xylophone thank you again, reading it again I now see that the "Protected Payment" is the additional sum above the £144 pension. The information on p15 says that 50% of the protected payment is inheritable. So basically of the £175 pw state pension £31 pw (£175 - £144) can be claimed by a surviving spouse. Not ideal but better than nothing I suppose.

No.  The £144 was the amount when the white paper was written, had risen to £155.65 when the new pension came into force and is currently £175.20.  If you did not have in excess of the full £155.65 at April 2016 then there is no, and will never be, an inheritable amount.

p00hsticks

Barry_Bear said:

xylophone thank you again, reading it again I now see that the "Protected Payment" is the additional sum above the £144 pension. The information on p15 says that 50% of the protected payment is inheritable. So basically of the £175 pw state pension £31 pw (£175 - £144) can be claimed by a surviving spouse. Not ideal but better than nothing I suppose.

No.

Forget about the £144 - that figure is out of date, annual 'triple lock' increases applied since that white paper was written mean that the current 'new State Pension' (nSP) figure is £175.20.

The only amount that can be inherited by a spouse is any 'protected amount' over that £175.20 figure (as at todays values - it will continue to increase in future based on the triple lock or replacement rules). As your forecast says that you aren't going to be entitled to any more than that, you have no proetected amount and so your spouse isn't going to inherit any of your state pension. 

The people who have protected amounts are those that had already accumulated more than the nSP amount (£155.65 at the point of introduction, now risen to £175,20) prior to April 2016 when the nSP was introduced. At that point if their projected pension under the old rules exceeded the maximum amount of new State Pension the surplus was 'protected', but the person was not able to increase their pension amount further. A protected amount would have been achieved by the person having been ''contracted in' for most of their working lives with a large amount of SERPS or S2P earned on top of the basic state pension under the pre-2016 rules,

Dazed_and_C0nfused

Barry_Bear said:

Thank you all. That helps a lot. So by paying 3 or 4 more years NI the pension will be around £175 and may increase further with the triple lock. So the GOV.UK forecast is accurate. Good!

xylophone thank you again, reading it again I now see that the "Protected Payment" is the additional sum above the £144 pension. The information on p15 says that 50% of the protected payment is inheritable. So basically of the £175 pw state pension £31 pw (£175 - £144) can be claimed by a surviving spouse. Not ideal but better than nothing I suppose.

No!  Just forget all about the £144.  The £144 and £175 are one and the same.

xylophone

So basically of the £175 pw state pension £31 pw (£175 - £144) can be claimed by a surviving spouse.

No - read the links again carefully.
As I said above

Therefore he did not have any "protected payment". 

From link cited in previous post https://www.gov.uk/new-state-pension/how-its-calculated#:~:text=The part of your starting,more to your State Pension

Valuing your National Insurance contributions and credits made before 6 April 2016

Your National Insurance record before 6 April 2016 is used to calculate your ‘starting amount’. 

If your starting amount is more than the full new State Pension

The part of your starting amount which is above the full new State Pension is called your ‘protected payment’. 

Your starting amount (otherwise called Foundation Amount) was not more than the full NSP.

Therefore you do not have a "protected payment" that can be inherited by a spouse.

Barry_Bear

Thank you for taking the time to clarify this.