Home responsibilities protection

Redboy

Hello all. My wife started receiving her state pension in November 2023. Prior to this, and on Martins advice, she checked her pension forecast which showed that her N.I. contributions were showing a shortfall of 2 years, one of these years was to look after her first child. This meant that unless she " bought " those 2 years she wouldn`t get the full pension. She duly paid for the missing 2 years ( approx £1600 ) and now gets the full weekly amount. Martin is now highlighting that HMRC have stopped contacting people who may not have received Home Responsibilities Protection (HRP) Can my wife claim back one of those missing years even though she has already paid for it and now gets the full pension amount ? TIA

molerat

It is not s simple as that and without more information it is impossible to say if it is worth your while chasing. Are you saying that only 1 year was missing from her child benefit years ?  Which year was it and did she pay to fill that particular year - which years did she buy ?  How many years  2015-16 and earlier does she have ? 

badmemory

And was she paying a "full stamp"  before those years & not a married woman's which meant no entitlement.

Redboy

Hello molerat and thanks for your reply. My wife`s N.I. record states that between 1975 and 2017 every year is a full year except 1981 to 1982. 2018 and 2019 is not full either. The two years which she paid for were 2020 to 2021, and 2021 to 2022. Her first child was born in July 1980.

DRS1

The NI experts (@molerat) will shoot me down but if she had full years from 75/6 to 15/6 apart from 81/2 surely she didn't need 81/2 anyway.  She was well over the 30 years maximum under the old basic state pension formula.

If that is right then only buying post 16/7 years would have improved her New state pension (which is what she did).

molerat

Redboy said:

Hello molerat and thanks for your reply. My wife`s N.I. record states that between 1975 and 2017 every year is a full year except 1981 to 1982. 2018 and 2019 is not full either. The two years which she paid for were 2020 to 2021, and 2021 to 2022. Her first child was born in July 1980.

In that case it would make no difference if 81-82 was full or not so it is not worth putting any effort into investigating.  She could only use a maximum of 30/35 pre 2016 years depending on contracted out status and she had around 40.  With that number of years and not receiving the full pension means she was contracted out limiting those useable years to 30 and would need to top up with post 2016 years.