Possibility of claiming 60% of husband's state pension rights

Martin Lewis is the man who knows. Just Google it. He has lots of useful info on his website and an episode of his recent TV programme featured the mess which is the Pension Service. The state pension is derisory when you compare it with other countries so to be underpaid due to their administrative errors is not on.

Having worked full time and paid full NI for many years I have always considered it grossly unfair that women could claim a state pension even if they had never worked outside the home, or elected to pay the ‘married women’s stamp’. Rather like the people who spend all their money and then end up in a care home being paid for by the local authority (i.e. taxpayers)/other residents who lived more prudently. I shall now duck but am entitled to my opinion.

@Germanshephersmum I tend to agree with you.

Although I only worked part-time for much of my working life, I realised that I wouldn't be entitled to a full pension, and didn't expect one.

However, I think many working women were only offered the 'married women's stamp', not fully realising the consequences.

Like yourself, we have lived quite prudently and built up a nest egg to hopefully pay for any potential care needs, and feel that it is a bit unfair that people who spend their money are paid for by council funding.

This is aimed at women who didn't pay the full stamp but might be able to claim on their husband's pension.

The information I've posted is taken from an article on an accountants' forum.

... am entitled to my opinion.

You are entitled to hold an opinion - mainly because no one can stop you - but if you voice it people are entitled to challenge or ignore it. Voicing an opinion is limited by many things, including whether the person who hears your opinion gives a damn and the law.

Thank you Dinahmo, for starting this thread. It's certainly worth those who think they may fall into this tranch of pensioners asking. It seems quite wrong that those whose husbands decided to retire before 2008 will not be part of the automatic review.

Thank you libra10. Back in the 70s I worked with someone who deliberately only paid the married women’s stamp, rather crowed about the resultant increase in her take-home pay and and once she had children never worked again, though once they were at school she could have if she chose to.

I do agree PippaZ, anyone is of course free to challenge whatever I or anyone else says and I expected a hail of brickbats for voicing my personal opinion here. I frequently don’t voice an opinion because I don’t give a damn, and as a retired lawyer I take care to keep on the right side of libel, difficult though that is on some threads!

So are you just saying it to get into a fight, Germanshepherdsmum? It seems a very aggressive attitude.

I would rather people have the money they were entitled to under the scheme they paid into - as most of us will be getting. I would have thought that is where the law would stand too.

I could never understand why my Mil received full state pension when she only had 11 years contributions. She also received a considerable uplift when Fil died, your article goes a long way to explaining why.

The schemes have changed over the years, as did society. There was a transition time when some went out to work. Some didn't think they should, with a husband and children to look after. I had my children in the 1970s. For some, especially the better educated higher earners, it paid for them to go back to work.

Many went back part-time as there was very little childcare available. As I said, society was in transition. Some men still felt they had succeeded if they earned enough for their wives to stay at home. The married women's stamp, a reflection of society when it started, ended in 1970.

Having children gave you qualifying years towards a basic pension until the child was 12. Again this reflected the remains of the societal norm that felt women with children would (and possibly should) stay at home if they could.

The people you are attacking grew up with different views of their roles. I find it leaves a very nasty taste in my mouth to see them attacked for doing just that.

Coming from several generations of women who worked after they married, mainly from choice, it never even occurred to me to pay the married woman's stamp.

I always paid the full stamp, but I can remember very heated discussions at work with other women, as they married, on the subject. iIseem to remember the majority favoured the freedom from dependecy paying the full stamp gave you.

I didn't qualify for the domestic responsibilities NI payments either as I went back to work too soon.

Having grown up with a working mother, by choice, and a father who never did the heavy handed husband bit, I just thought this was normal. I could never have married a man so antideluvian, that he thought he should control me like that. As it is DH's mother was the main wage earner in their household and he just assumed he would have a working wife both before and as soon as practical after childbirth.

What about those women who stayed at home in order to look after seriously ill children or perhaps in order to look after a sick parent?

No, PZ, just stating my personal opinion and not expecting it to be popular. I court neither popularity nor fights.

I don't think it's about 'attacking' anyone - that's very emotive language.

A friend of mine - university educated and well able to work - left her job when she married and never worked again. She has four children, and because of the spacing of them got her NI paid until the youngest was 12 (although having children gave you qualifying years towards a pension until the youngest child was 16 not so long ago. It is relatively recently that this was changed to 12). At this point her husband's accountant advised her to pay a voluntary contribution to ensure that she gets a full pension, which she will soon be entitled to.

How can this be fair, when people who can't afford not to work are paying NI to subsidise her, and others like her, when the workers have to pay for childcare and transport, and all the other things associated with working, and she had none of those costs?

I think there is a difference between people like my friend, and those of earlier generations when the opportunities for women to work were fewer, as childcare was more difficult to find. I grew up in the 60s, and none of my friends' mothers worked, and I don't think there were any nurseries near us at all, so it would have been unfair to penalise them for not working, and to leave them destitute when their husbands died.

As time went by, though, there was nothing stopping those women going to work - by the 80s, the mums who had babies in the late 50s and 60s had years of working life ahead of them, and when their children had grown up there was no reason why they couldn't do it. My mum was 45 when my brother (her youngest) hit 16 - what was stopping her generation from going to work then? 16 year olds can join the army, so surely 12 year olds should be able to let themselves in, make a sandwich and sit in the house for a couple of hours after school? It would have made more sense to pay NI until the youngest child was at school, and then level the playing field so that some women were not given a free pension for decades of not working whilst others subsidised them.

There is definitely no reason why mothers can't go to work now, and hasn't been for years. My first was born in 1990, and by then there were creches and nurseries everywhere. They were expensive, but a bit later the Blair government introduced pre-school nurseries and tax credits for those on lower incomes, to make it easier for parents could afford to work.

Yes, some mothers choose not to work - both now and back then, which is fine, but choices cost money, and I don't think it's reasonable for people to expect others to fund their choices. It's not as though their husbands pay (or paid) extra tax to make up for the loss of theirs, yet grants, benefits, means tests and so on are based on household incomes that don't differentiate between two and one-income families. It's another case where the system works to help those who have more in the first place (and can afford to stay at home) at the expense of those who have to work to pay the bills.

Germanshepherdsmum

Thank you libra10. Back in the 70s I worked with someone who deliberately only paid the married women’s stamp, rather crowed about the resultant increase in her take-home pay and and once she had children never worked again, though once they were at school she could have if she chose to.

I do agree PippaZ, anyone is of course free to challenge whatever I or anyone else says and I expected a hail of brickbats for voicing my personal opinion here. I frequently don’t voice an opinion because I don’t give a damn, and as a retired lawyer I take care to keep on the right side of libel, difficult though that is on some threads!

If she paid the married woman's stamp she lost out as a stay at home mum as she won't have been credited with contributions for those years. She wasn't as clever as she thought.

kissngate

I could never understand why my Mil received full state pension when she only had 11 years contributions. She also received a considerable uplift when Fil died, your article goes a long way to explaining why.

Well she had at least one child so probably got credited with NI for at least 16 years so that gives her 27 years. You used to only need 30 years for a full pension as a woman so if she had 2 children it would be easy for her to get a full pension or if she had other caring responsibilities.

Doodledog "what was stopping her generation from going to work?"

Ageism perhaps? When I was 40 back in 1987 I was told several times by agencies when job hunting that I was too old.

I remember my own mother joining an adult education class. They had to write an essay, which she did but her's was just a page long. She came home after that class, rather unsure of herself because the others had written a lot more. The teacher was fine about it but she felt insecure and stopped going.

My father taught her to trace documents, something that was done in the past. She got a job at the local authority but eventually worked at Queen Mary College until she started to make mistakes (early onset alzheimers). I doubt that many women were in her position - having a husband who could train her to do skilled work.

I suppose that many of those women who stayed at home at husbands who could afford to keep them there. Imagine having to explain why one spent x amount on a pair of shoes rather than y? Or having to ask for the money to buy them in the first place?

Had husbands, not at husbands.

Doodledog The NI voluntary payments only cover pension contributions, they do not cover anything else, so they equal the amount of a working person's NI payment that goes towards the pension, so there is no subsidising going on. The rest of the NI payment goes towards sickness benefit, unemployment benefit etc, which those paying voluntary payments are not entitled to.

I was made redundant into early retirement in my early 50s. I tried to get back to work but couldn't, but instead of claiming any unemployment pay, I just paid the voluntary payment and immersed myself in voluntary work. I probably saved those paying full stamp a lot of money overall and on the whole earned my pension other ways.

I do not think that married women working was quite as unusual as you suggest, in the 1950s. I was born in the 1950s, my mother retuned to work in the early 50s when my youngest sister was about 3.

I agree with you Monika. My mother was born in 1931 and worked full-time for most of her life as a secretary, apart from 11 years when my sisters and I were young. My maternal grandmother also worked for most of her life, as her husband left her. It never occurred to me that staying at home could be an option.

I do not think that married women working was quite as unusual as you suggest, in the 1950s. I was born in the 1950s, my mother retuned to work in the early 50s when my youngest sister was about 3.

You may well be right - I was born in 59, so just a child in the 60s, and can only vaguely remember that all my friends' mums didn't work. My mum always said that it was virtually impossible for women to work when we were little, as there was just no childcare - it only worked out for women whose own mothers were willing and able to help out.

Germanshepherdsmum

Having worked full time and paid full NI for many years I have always considered it grossly unfair that women could claim a state pension even if they had never worked outside the home, or elected to pay the ‘married women’s stamp’. Rather like the people who spend all their money and then end up in a care home being paid for by the local authority (i.e. taxpayers)/other residents who lived more prudently. I shall now duck but am entitled to my opinion.

I don’t think people should judge women who worked through the late 60s and early 70s unless they experienced it themselves.

I am from a working class background and I can only speak of my experience. While working for the gas board, remember ‘73 equal pay, men in the department I worked in, earned more, I asked for equal pay, not possible because they came in an hour earlier (and left an hour earlier). I said I was prepared to the do the same, no not possible, it was for men.

Later, I was pregnant and was told, by the head of my department, a woman, that it was embarrassing the men in my department and should leave before my dates. True true true. I went round asking all the men, they disagreed, they thought it was wonderful. So I didn’t leave until 6 weeks before birth.

Another place, after I had had my DD, I went for an interview, I was told I had the job but as a one parent mother they couldn’t give it to me. I had a childminder and two grandmothers but it was a nono.

The jobs were not available nor was the pay, yes I paid the low rate and I brought up the children. Electricity was not cheaper because I was a single parent woman.

There are always people who take advantage of the system but I still feel feel the system is to blame, enforce equal pay and opportunities.

That's a fair point, mokryna. I do remember sexism at work in the 70s, but I didn't have my children until long after that, and by then things had changed.

Pippa @ 6 pm.the system has changed over the years.
I must be well out of date.
My husband ia 8 years younger than me so I know I'm likely to go first. I know he would be able to claim part of my Local Govt. pension but amazed that this also applies to my Govt. Pension.
We both worked mostly fulltime for most of our working years.