Will I inherit any state pension from my late husband?

I have just turned 66 and I am due to receive my state pension. My late husband and I were police officers and were both in the work scheme.

My husband was born in 1949 and died in 2016. At the time of his death, my husband was in receipt of a full state pension.

Shortly afterwards, I was informed that I would receive a weekly sum (£45) of his state pension when I became of pensionable age.

To date, I have not been able to find out if I am still due this entitlement. There has been no communication from the DWP regarding this and all phone calls to them requesting the information has failed to shed any light on the matter.

I understand that the rules have changed in the time since his death, but after looking on the DWP website for information regarding inheriting extra state pension, I feel that I am due something as he reached the state pension age before 6 April, 2016.

Can you inform me if am I entitled to a portion of my late husband’s state pension?

SCROLL DOWN TO FIND OUT HOW TO ASK STEVE YOUR PENSION QUESTION      

Steve Webb replies: There was a big shake-up to the state pension system in April 2016 and this can sometime make it hard to work out if you are entitled to claim a pension based on the contributions of a late husband or wife.

It can be especially confusing where, as in your case, one of you came under the old system and the other under the new one.

Fortunately, the DWP has produced a relatively simple tool where you can answer a few questions about your own date of birth and that of your spouse, and it will set out the basics as to what you may be entitled to.

Steve Webb: Find out how to ask the former Pensions Minister a question about your retirement savings in the box below

You can find the tool here. 

I have used the tool based on the information you have supplied. It says that ‘your state pension will normally be based on your own NI contributions only’.

But if you read down the page there is a separate section headed ‘inheriting state pension’ and this is the part which is relevant to your query.

In your case, your late husband came under the old system and it says you ‘may be able to inherit a portion of his additional state pension’.

The exact percentage depends on the date of birth of the person who died, but in your husband’s case you would inherit 50 per cent of any additional state pension he was receiving.

A full list of percentages and dates of birth can be found here. 

What the Government tool doesn’t tell you is how much this might be.

Where someone had a full working life as an employee and was never a member of a company pension scheme, they could build up a big ‘additional’ state pension so there would be a good amount to inherit.

But there are two groups whose additional state pension could be low or even zero:

-People who were in a ‘contracted out’ occupational pension scheme such as the Police pension; for those years their main earnings-related pension entitlement would be built up in their occupational pension scheme rather than the state scheme, so this would reduce the amount of additional state pension that was left to inherit;

– Self-employed people, whose NI contributions did not entitle them to additional state pension.

Whether you will inherit the £45 you remember or some different figure (or nothing at all) depends entirely on how much additional state pension your husband built up and we would only know this if we had access to his NI record.

But if this turns out to be a low figure then it would probably be because your late husband had long service in the police scheme.

If so, you should be getting a worthwhile widow’s pension from that source instead of from the state pension.

I should say, finally, that I have come across cases where widows were due an inherited amount on top of their new state pension but the DWP failed to make the payment.

If there appears to be no inherited amount in your state pension please do not hesitate to contact me again if you think this is wrong.