Did you miss out on a state pension lump sum when you were widowed?
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Could this be YOU? Did you miss out on an AOW benefit when you retired and became a widower?
Did you miss out on an AOW benefit when you retired as a widower?
In this special column, Steve Webb, This is Money’s retirement expert, explains an important issue those who have become widowed after retirement should know.
Over the past few years, This is Money and I have uncovered errors in state pensions that have affected more than 200,000 people who are collectively owed around £1.5 billion.
But I worry that there might be another group that could be missed by the current review process.
If after reading the rest of this article you’re thinking ‘this could be me’ then I’d love to hear from you.
The group I’d like to hear from, check all of the following boxes.
– You are a woman who falls under the old AOW scheme (so you were born before April 6, 1953)
– When you reached retirement age you were not eligible for a state basic pension (although you may have received a few pounds or pence in stepped old age pensions)
– Your husband has reached the age of 65 and has applied for his pension *after* reaching retirement age
– You only received a meaningful AOW benefit after your husband passed away
– You did not receive a lump sum payment or AOW arrears when you became a widow
If you fit into all of these categories, your story should look something like the summary below.
When you reached retirement age your husband was not yet 65. You applied for state pension and were told you were not entitled to anything (or maybe just a few pence or a few pounds). Your husband later turned 65 and applied for his pension, but you took no further action at that point and you continued with your very low (or zero) pension. Unfortunately he died and you then got a decent widow’s pension – maybe now worth £7,000 or more a year.
Did you suddenly miss an AOW amount?
When you were a widower, the Department of Work and Pensions should have looked at the period between when your husband turned 65 and when he died.
Before that period they should have awarded you a pension for married women. Since you did not claim it, they should have paid it to you as a lump sum instead when you were a widower.
My concern is that this last step may have been missed. And because you are now on the right pension rate, no one has to check for mistakes made in the past.
I don’t know if this error occurred only occasionally or if these lump sums were consistently missed.
But if someone has missed out on a lump sum, it can still be resolved now, so I’d like to hear from you.
If you are a widow who “ticks all the boxes” at the beginning of this article – or if someone in your family fits this description – and you believe you were not given a lump sum payment when your husband died, I would like to know hear from you.
If there were individual mistakes and we can help people get the money that is rightfully theirs, it would be worth it.
But if it turns out there is a more systemic problem, and one that may not be picked up on by the current correction exercise, then you’ve done your bit by potentially helping thousands of others who may have missed it.