Will you inherit any state pension from your spouse?

Many couples worry about how the surviving partner will cope financially when one of them dies.

One of the most frequently asked questions for our columnist Steve Webb is how much state pension a widowed partner can expect to receive.

There is no clear answer as it depends on when the surviving partner reaches or has passed state pension age and their spouse’s date of birth and National Insurance registration.

What you can get, if anything, is much less generous if you reached or are yet to reach State Pension age after April 2016.

Below we explain the old pre-2016 and new rules for widowed people. You can enter your details for a guide to what you can get This state pension instrument created by the government.

How does the state pension work?

Anyone with a National Insurance record of at least 10 qualifying years can get a certain amount of State Pension.

You must have 35 years of contributions to qualify for the brand new fixed state pension which was launched in April 2016.

Before then, you had to have 30 years of qualifying National Insurance contributions, although this number and the rules varied over previous decades.

Until 2016 the state pension is divided into two tiers, the basic level plus an additional amount if you have made further payments through S2P and Serps.

You can fill unpaid and or underpaid National Insurance gaps from previous years, make voluntary top-ups to buy extra qualifying years and build up more years if you have enough time between now and State Pension age.

Everyone gets the option to defer their State Pension to get more in later years. You can check your NI record here and get a State Pension forecast here.

How much is the state pension now?

The basic state pension is £156.20 a week or around £8,120 a year. It is supplemented by additional state pension rights – S2P, Serps or Graduated Retirement Benefit – if they have been accumulated during working years.

The new ‘matching rate’ state pension introduced from 6 April 2016 is £203.85 a week or £10,600 a year if you qualify for the full amount.

People who have contracted S2P and Serps over the years and retired after April 2016 receive less than the full new state pension.

Even if you have paid in full for a full 35 years or more, if you sign a contract for several years on top of it, it can still reduce what you get.

Who will inherit the state pension before 2016?

If you reached State Pension age before 6 April 2016, there were much more generous rules for receiving inheritance payments than for people retiring now.

What you get depends on how much your spouse has made up the National Insurance Record.

You must also not marry before the state pension age.

Basic state pension. As long as you haven’t topped up your own State Pension entitlement and your spouse has built up enough National Insurance on their own, in other words they haven’t paid the reduced married women’s stamp duty, you’ll get a top-up, or even the full basic £156.20 a week. if your spouse had a full record.

Additional state pension. You inherit 50-100 percent of this amount, depending on your deceased spouse’s date of birth.

On the Supplementary State Pension, the Gov.uk website states: “If they died before 6 October 2002, you can inherit up to 100 per cent of their Serps pension.

“If they died in 2002 on or after 6 October, then the maximum amount of Serper’s Pension and State Pension you can receive depends on their date of birth.”

Let’s note that self-employed people only made basic state pension.

In addition, many people were ‘contracted out’ of paying additional state pension for periods and instead had their contributions go into their private or work schemes, so they would collect less if there were any additional state pension payments.

Have you perhaps been paid a state pension from being a widow?

If you think you should have inherited the State Pension from your late spouse but didn’t, there’s a chance you missed out.

An estimated 237,000 women, including many elderly widows, have been hit with the state pension in a £1.5 billion scandal exposed by former pensions minister Steve Webb and This is Money in 2020.

We’ve reported many stories of women receiving payments of tens of thousands of pounds, and several cases of widows owed more than £100,000 after being denied the correct state pension due to DWP errors.

Webb, now a partner at LCP, has a tool on his firm’s website to help widows find out if they are not being paid a state pension. DWP contact details here.

What can you inherit if you reach state pension age after 2016?

Under the new rules, your State Pension must be based on your own NI, not your spouse’s.

What you can inherit from them, if anything, is therefore much more limited if you have reached or are yet to reach State Pension age after April 2016.

This is especially the case when you are both subject to the post-2016 rules.

If the spouse who dies qualifies for a full new state pension, currently on £203.85 a week or less, the surviving spouse will inherit nothing.

However, if the deceased spouse received more than this due to previously accumulated additional state pension, the excess is treated as a ‘protected payment’ and the surviving spouse receives half of it.

There are special rules if you paid the married women’s stamp duty and you can use Gov.uk’s Inheriting State Pension tool to find out more.

Meanwhile, if the surviving spouse comes under the old system and her spouse comes under the new, the former can fill in their main state pension gaps and inherit 50 per cent of any additional state pension or server that the latter has built up before April 2016.

If, under the new system, the widowed spouse reaches the state pension age and the deceased reaches the old one, the former will inherit 50-100 percent of the latter’s additional state pension or Serbs (see the table above), but not their main state. pension

Visit here for details of what the Government provides for bereavement support.