State Pension

Maisie

yes you only get the Home responsibilities pension bit added if you were paying the full rate NI before you stopped work.

I lost out as only paying reduced rate. Also worked a few hours to fit in with school hours and did not earn enough to pay Ni so lost out on those years for pension too.

Women did not earn much at that time especially as most worked part time and NI fixed rate(stamps) was high so took up most of earnings

krisskross

I also fall into the category of married women paying the small stamp. I retired 2 years ago and happily my husband is 5 years older than me so I could have the small pension based on his contributions straightaway.
I did get a phone call from the pensions department in the 1980s asking me if I wanted to change to full stamp. However she said that with only 15 years to go to retirement I could not improve my state pension to something more than I would get on my husbands contributions. As the extra cost was going to be in the region of about £100 a month it certainly was not going to be a viable option....better to save the cash.
I also have an excellent pension from the NHS scheme. so in my case the State pension although welcome, is not the main part of my retirement income.However for women who have reached retirement age only to find that very little cash awaits them it must be a huge shock. Most will have never even realised that a decision taken in the 1960's will come back to haunt them 40 odd years later.
Unfortunately as I have read the situation the only way that a woman can get the full pension is if her husband dies, she would also "inherit" a pecentage of his serps payments.

Maisie

My husband is 6 months younger than me so had to wait 5 years until he retired. then the extra I got from his pension was only about £5/6 a week.
I did pay into company pension for a while so got a little bit from that.
Thankfully the two combined just bring me under the tax limit. So no tax.

My husband was not paying much tax on his meagre pension then he got a pension increase and the tax taken wiped out the pension increase and more!
We're a few pounds over the limit to get pension credit, council tax benefit etc.
Makes you wonder sometimes if it is worth paying into company pensions and then not getting the benefits that Tony Blair says are yours..''
'' Pick it up it's yours' pension credit advert.

EdInvestor

margaretclare wrote:

In the 1950s/60s it was never expected that a married woman would expect to have a pension in her own right. Women who are now realising the parlous situation they're in have told me: 'I was told I had to change to the "small stamp"'. I've said: 'No, we always had the choice, whether to pay full or not'. 'Oh no, when I went back to work after the honeymoon the employer's accounts department told me I had to change'.

That's appalling. :mad: Have these women been cheated out of their state pension by employers saving money on their part of the NI contribution?

margaretclare

krisskross wrote:

Unfortunately as I have read the situation the only way that a woman can get the full pension is if her husband dies, she would also "inherit" a pecentage of his serps payments.

When my first husband died in 1992 I was 57. I got widow's pension based on his contribution record. As he hadn't worked from 1976 because of heart disease (he died aged 58) he hadn't accrued any SERPS. When I decided to change to state retirement pension it was actually more favourable to me to take SRP in my own right. I also have a small amount of SERPS for the years when I wasn't contracted-out into the NHS scheme.

Women have said that they couldn't afford it, that it wasn't worth the extra expense, they needed the money now not later, they needed it for family essentials etc. I could have said the same. We had 2 growing daughters both of whom stayed on at school, my husband was on invalidity benefits (as was) and I was the main breadwinner. I could easily have thought 'now not later, I need the money i.e. in the 1970s/1980s rather than contributing to the NI scheme'. I am extremely thankful that I didn't. It would have been short-termism in the extreme. And yes, I could easily have found ways of using that money. It would have just gone into the 'pot', never to be seen again. Especially when we were trying to reconstruct a derelict Pennine cottage as a project for my husband, so he didn't feel so useless. That cottage swallowed money like it was going out of fashion.

Now, I'm remarried. My husband and I both get full state pensions plus SERPS plus annuities based on previous careers, in our own right. I never 'bought' the idea of depending on a husband for everything, not even when it was the prevailing idea being sold to women, and when I was laughed at and told I was being stupid.

Yes, decisions made many decades ago are still arising to affect many women, some of whom are already retired, others not yet.

Margaret Clare

CIS

HRP can only be awarded for yrs after 6/4/1978, so depending on her childrens ages she may not be entitled to any.

HRP may also not appear in any calcualtions if she can achieve a better pension without using any HRP she may have, a qualifying yr is better than a yr of HRP, and will be used as such.

ie 39yrs needed, 20 qual yrs and 10 yrs of HRP, BSP = 69%
39yrs needed, 21 qual yrs and 09yrs of HRP, BSP = 70%

She would be eligible for Bereavement Benefit, but its only paid for 1 yr. She would however then have her State Pension assessed as a widow using her husbands record substituted for her own if it improved her State Pension,as well as inheriting S2P/AP based on date of death and 1/2 of any graduated pension.

adminannie

Hi Margaret, I worked until I had children 1968 and didnt go back to work until 1988, and I have asked for an allowance for being off work looking after children. I was told that allowance was not in force in 1968 so I couldnt claim it. I suppose I should have returned to work sooner but at the time I wasnt thinking about pensions, I just think it strange that someone who has never paid national insurance gets a full pension, and I have reduced pension after paying full insurance but not for enough years. Annie

CIS

You should be entitled to HRP for each yr from 6/4/1978 to the 6/4 before the childs 16th birthday.

The only way you wouldn't be entitled to it is if you were not receiving child benefit in your name or where paying reduced rate NI.

(I was an advisor with State Pension Forecasting for 3 yrs)

For a person claiming a pension as a widow, the normal rules regarding eligibility do not apply, as long as the dead partner met the 2 basic conditions for the state pension then the living partner is deemed to have met those conditions in order that they can claim a widows pension on the partners record.

The qualifying is based on the number of yrs in the working life of the deceased person

Length of working life Number of qualifying years for full widows pension
10 years or less Length of working life, minus one
11–20 years Length of working life, minus two
21–30 years Length of working life, minus three
31–40 years Length of working life, minus four
41 years or more Length of working life, minus five

So, for example if the deceased person had worked for 35 yrs, they would need to have had qualifying 31yrs to automatically give their partner a full pension, anything less would involve a calculaion taking in to account the living partners NI record.

margaretclare

CIS wrote:

You should be entitled to HRP for each yr from 6/4/1978 to the 6/4 before the child's 16th birthday.

The only way you wouldn't be entitled to it is if you were not receiving child benefit in your name or where paying reduced rate NI.

Wouldn't she have received it up to the child becoming 18, if that child stayed on in education?

Margaret Clare

margaretclare

adminannie wrote:

Hi Margaret, I worked until I had children 1968 and didnt go back to work until 1988, and I have asked for an allowance for being off work looking after children. I was told that allowance was not in force in 1968 so I couldnt claim it.

No, it didn't start until 1978, but you should have been entitled to it for 10 yrs between 1978 and 1988.

This all illustrates how attitudes have changed in the last half-century. When the Welfare State began in 1948 it was never envisaged that women would claim retirement pension in their own right. The only women who did were the single women, mainly the ones whose fiances or husbands had died in the 2 world wars. It was assumed that any woman who got married was then totally dependent on her husband's earnings both then and for retirement purposes. If she worked, as an increasing number did, her earnings weren't taken seriously, were spoken of as 'pin-money' even when they were used for family necessities!

The 1970s were when a lot of legislation changed - the Sex Discrimination Act, the Equal Pay Act, but anomalies remained. It wasn't until the late 1980s that women's tax affairs were treated independently of their husband. and I think that when the married women's smaller contribution was stopped in 1978 it should have been abolished completely i.e. for the women who were paying it then as well as for those who married after April 1978. There would have been loud screams from women who said they couldn't afford it, but it's a bit like the argument now for compulsory pensions. We can always find something else that needs money spending on it now rather than later.

I remain deeply thankful that I made that choice all those years ago. Instead of getting 60% of SRP based on my husband's contributions, I get the full amount in my own right.

Margaret Clare