Pension for life-long SAHP

[LindorDoubleChoc]

What happens when you reach retirement age if you have always been a stay at home parent and your partner retires and doesn't have the income to sustain two people?

Quite niche - but we were talking about relatives of our inlaws where the wife SAH forever, the husband had an above average paying job and reasonable pension I guess (but by no means flashy or wealthy). Now he's retired and not working so will receive state pension and his company pension.

What is the SAHP entitled to in terms of state pension? Are they now better off than when they weren't working? Is it means tested in terms of family income?

So you think the individual should contact the pension people and say don’t give me my pension? Or that no one should be a sahp?

Well, as I said upthread, I don't think it is being a SAHP if your kids are grown up. And yes I'm judgy of able bodied people who don't work but still take benefits, I don't think I'm unusual in that viewpoint. Taking the state pension when you haven't worked by choice falls into that category for me. So no I wouldn't expect someone to need a pension if they didn't financially need to work.

If you're so wealthy you don't need to work, you're too wealthy to need the state pension either.

Some might have children with disabilities (and as far as I know, carers get shockingly little in payment and no specific pension plan), and might then have looked after other family.
Won't help you now OP, but I really think it's time we paid carers a decent amount, as well as considering pensions/respite better. People like this save the country so much money, quite apart from the moral aspect.

In this couple's case they obviously had enough to live on while he was working but the household income must have gone down a lot when he retired. You'd never describe them as wealthy.

My question was purely driven by curiosity about what someone who has barely worked get when they "retire". For benefits claimants, do their benefits just continue the same after they reach retirement age or is it then changed to a pension of some kind?

My grandma lived to 94 and never worked after she had her first child at 18! She wasn't impoverished, she was widowed at the age of 63 and lived another 30 years on her late husband's work pension and the state pension. It seems incredible now when you think of it.

My ex’s mother-in-law retired at 50 on her teachers pension. She did work to be fair.
From 38 to 55
She’s now 92
And has been receiving over three grand a month.
Those were the days eh ?

I don’t know how it works for households where one person has been working/has a pension. But if you never worked and don’t qualify for a state pension you just get pension credit instead. Which gives you pretty much the same as a pension. It also has the added bonus of a few free things I think like dental treatment and opticians (if you can get it) as well as possibly reduced council tax. Those who get a normal state pension do not automatically qualify for those things even if it’s their only income as far as I know.

She will probably be getting the (old) basic level of state pension as my DM is in a similar situation and that's what she gets. DM was born 1948, only worked from 1967-1973, then was a SAHP until youngest DC left school. Then took PT cash-in-hand job for about 15 years, but made no NI contributions during that time AFAIK. She 'retired' at 60 and has been claiming her pension ever since. I'm fairly sure she claimed 'married woman's stamp', which was based on her DH's contributions and available to women opting in before April 1977.

Social attitudes towards this have changed so much. I was born in the middle class suburbs of London in the 1970s and almost every house (neighbours, friends parents, parents of friends) seemed to have a mum or wife at home, even where children were young adults or had left home. It was entirely normal and commonplace for women not to be working. Yes some women did work, but it wasn’t expected as such or ever really talked about. I don’t think there was a nursery for miles around and the only childcare provision was playgroups, which only operated for a few hours per day and were organised by groups of mums in the first place.
I also think the opportunities for going ‘back to work’ were fairly limited, unless you had a specific qualification like nursing or teaching. There were very few part-time jobs, sex discrimination laws had only just been passed and why would an employer hire an older woman with children when they could hire a man or, if they were really being ‘modern’, a young woman fresh out of college?
Times really have changed.

Social attitudes towards this have changed so much. I was born in the middle class suburbs of London in the 1970s and almost every house (neighbours, friends parents, parents of friends) seemed to have a mum or wife at home, even where children were young adults or had left home. It was entirely normal and commonplace for women not to be working. Yes some women did work, but it wasn’t expected as such or ever really talked about. I don’t think there was a nursery for miles around and the only childcare provision was playgroups, which only operated for a few hours per day and were organised by groups of mums in the first place.
I also think the opportunities for going ‘back to work’ were fairly limited, unless you had a specific qualification like nursing or teaching. There were very few part-time jobs, sex discrimination laws had only just been passed and why would an employer hire an older woman with children when they could hire a man or, if they were really being ‘modern’, a young woman fresh out of college?
Times really have changed.

Yes, agreed @BadSkiingMum My DM was EXPECTED to quit her job when she got pregnant in the early 1970s and not expected to go back to work after the baby was born. She and all her friends were SAHMs. Most of them had a very low level of education anyway. My DM left school at 16, went to secretarial college and started work at 17. The norm among her contemporaries was to marry young, have babies and keep a house. Working class women worked because their income was needed, but one professional salary back then could support a family and so that's what most families did - they lived off the husband's salary.

Don't judge someone born in 1946 on today's standards and pension rules.

Prior to 2016 (I think) as a couple they would have got a married couple's state pension and if her husband predecessed her, she would have got a single person's pension, and it was based upon his contribution record, not hers.

My MIL was born at about that time and got half of her husband's private pensions on his death, as well as the single person's state pension.

There are quite a few ways to get full NI credits without working these days. Anyone on UC will get NI credits towards their pension. Anyone who claimed the old benefits of Incapacity Benefit, ESA or JSA would have had NI credits paid.
There were also credits-only claims for ESA and JSA too. Anyone claiming Child Benefit used to get NI credits until the youngest child was 16, and these days you can still get credits until the youngest child is 12. Anyone claiming Carer's Allowance would get NI credits, but it is also possible to claim Carer's Credit which just pays the NI credit even if someone else is claiming the Carer's Allowance. Grandparents can claim the NI credits from Child Benefit if the parents don't need it (eg if they are paying NI through employment). HMRC don't ask for proof of
grandparents doing the caring, and I've seen discussions on FB where people have said they had the Child Benefit credits transferred or got Carer's Credit just to help their parents build up NI credits and they just had to tick a box on a form to allow it.

This woman is part of a couple so her entitlement is different than if she was single/a widow.

As part of a couple she'll be entitled to some state pension based on the NI credits she earned as a SAHP. If they were savvy, they could have also bought extra credits to top up her state pension.

If she was alone and only had part of a state pension, she might be entitled to pension credit unless she was also receiving some of her DHs pension eg if she was a widow/divorced. The same would apply to anyone above state pension age. Benefits claimants receive NI credits towards a pension. They receive a pension when they reach state pension age. If their income is deemed insufficient or they have disabilities they are entitled to pension credit and/or attendance allowance but the exact amount depends on their circumstances.

@Bjorkdidit but she was born in 1946 and would have retired in 2006 - different rules applied then

It used to just be called Housewife.

But assuming they're alive today (I'm guessing she's around 80?), she'll be entitled to some state pension based on her 24 years as a SAHP. Until fairly recently, HRP was paid up until your youngest DC left school, so someone with a few well spaced offspring could easily gain 25 or more years, as your relative did, which would go a long way towards a state pension.

If her DH dies before her, it's quite likely she'll continue to receive some of his pension. If not and her income falls below a minimum level, she'll be entitled to pension credit and other help depending on her circumstances (home owner or renting, level of savings, does she qualify for attendance allowance). This applies whether she reached retirement age this year or 20 years ago.

My DM is slightly younger but only earned NIC from working between 16 and 20 and then from 50 ish until her early 60s when she reached state retirement age. Between that she was mostly a SAHP apart from some very part time work (at the time it was standard for mothers to limit their hours to lower than the NIC threshold, because they were already getting NIC due to CB so it was seen as paying out for no benefit). However she still gets a full state pension because the combination of working for about 15-20 years along with having 5 DC over 9 years meant she had full NIC. She also gets a widows pension as DF is deceased.

@Bjorkdidit Her pension would be based on the old pension rules, she'd get the higher of any state pension that she'd built up on her own, or 60% of her husband's pension if she hadn't been working herself.

On her husband's death, she'd get 100% of his state pension (and it would be the pre-2016 value) plus whatever percentage of any private pension that the private pension rules said - my MIL got 50% of FIL's pensions.

Only it’s not were, it’s are. Teacher’s
pensions are unfunded meaning there is no pot of money paying out those in retirement today… it’s coming from what’s being paid in by schools to the TPS today (80% of contributions come from the school), and probably topped up by taxpayers.

Absolutely! Unfunded liability is about £1.2 trillion.

How can anybody be a SAHP permanently? Surely children grow up?

I thought it was in the billions, not over a trillion?

Even the gold plated pension isn’t enough to stop teachers leaving in droves though, and it’s a similar story in other professions with good defined benefits pensions 😕

Some women particularly in the 2000s started off having one baby at 17 and then spaced them out five years apart right up until 2017 when they brought in the two child benefit cap. Which meant they had the right to claim benefits for their entire working life.
Or, so they thought.
Job Centre plus is absolutely full of 50 to 60-year-olds that were expecting to retire on a state pension or not have to work until the baby born in 2016 turned to 16 as would’ve been the case back in 2000
And the truth is, they won’t ever work
Everybody will put them on all of these schemes and all of these programs, but they’ve got no skills and they’ve definitely got no inclination.
My stepsister has got around the biological need to actually pop the children out and the two Rule by just adopting and fostering them instead and there’s a lot of women doing that.
Not that good Foster homes aren’t needed of course they are but it’s a good way of avoiding actually having to go to work isn’t it?

It’s just absolute madness the woman’s going in for heart surgery in a couple of months time to prolong her life. Even further. She doesn’t actually have a life. She’s just sat there rotting while my ex-husband claims her pension and spends it.
Honestly, that man will keep her on life-support for 20 years if he can
Meanwhile, her granddaughter who’s a teacher is funding her own Department stationary out of her 32 grand a year salary

People don't like to think of the state pension as a benefit. Although it is. For those who accrued their NI contributions through work, it's an earned benefit. So it is unusual.