That cutting benefits to widow/ers with young children by over twenty thousand pounds is heartless and cruel?

[Somerville]

My DH was diagnosed with lymphoma in 2013 and died in 2014. During both the period he was ill, and immediately afterwards, it was extremely difficult for me to continue working. A well as caring for him and then dealing with the huge administrative burden, I have children for whom continuing to attend school every day and 'cope' with normal life was impossible. Alongside all that I had to somehow try to find a way to live with my own grief. And then get out and learn a living - as a freelancer I'd have had no income at all unless I continued to work.

The bereavement benefits I received helped me immeasurably.

• I got a bereavement payment of £2000 which helped cover the immediate few months after his death when I could barely get dressed - let alone work.

• I also got a monthly amount of widowed parents allowance - about £450. (Non means tested but taxable, meaning that as my earnings increased I returned some of this to the government through my tax bill. However, I knew the safety net was there when my earnings dropped again - as indeed they did at one point when one of my children could only manage half days at school.)

I've remarried so no longer qualify - fair enough - but if hadn't I'd have received this until my youngest child left school.

However, the support available for parents who are experience the devastation of becoming widowed after April 1st this year is changing.

• £3,500 immediately.
• £100 per month for the next 18 months.

That's it.

Research by the Childhood Bereavement Network (CBN) suggests 91% of widowed parents will be supported for a shorter period of time than they would under the current system, which can pay out until the youngest child leaves school. It says the typical working family will lose out on more than £12,000, and expects a working parent with young children to lose even more – £23,500 on average. link here

Widowed parents are lone parents without any shared care with an ex partner. Without any maintenance payments from a former partner. And with bereaved, confused and devastated children.

How about it MN? Am I unreasonable to think this change is cruel? And if not, what can I do about it?

Where are people getting 18 years of widow's pension from? It is 52 weeks! from the date of death of the spouse or Civil partner.

www.gov.uk/bereavement-allowance

£2000 lump sum payment. Yes it helps but considering that wouldn't pay for the basic costs of a basic funeral unless you want the "direct funeral" route @ £1600. www.moneyadviceservice.org.uk/en/articles/how-much-does-a-funeral-cost

This all assumes that you are married and not in a de-facto relationship where you are NOT entitled to any of this.

Yes you might have life assurance or receive pension pay outs but these in turn will be impacting on any child tax credits (£16,000 max savings coming into effect soon).

for you Somerville

Widows and children have through the ages been almost a cliché for the most vulnerable in our society. I'm shocked at the people who just mindlessly repeating that there is not enough to go round. As a poster said, there is always enough for another war venture.

And as for saying that people should take out insurance, I thought that that was the idea behind the welfare system, a form of national insurance that everyone pays into.

But people have become more and more desensitised under the current economic and political system, it is so sad.

It's not the same at all, you're not also dealing with a bereavement and bereaved children. - Actually a child can and often does grieve the loss of a parent who is still alive, for some it can be an extremely traumatic event in their lives and they constantly wonder why their parent doesn't love them enough to be around in their lives. Don't underestimate the emotional pain and heartache of abandoned children.

There is enough money to go around.
This is a wealthy nation that can afford for a football club to pay millions for a player.

Somerville, I am sorry for your loss
I am also sorry for some of the hostile and nasty comments you have had. Those people do not speak for the majority.

Children whose parents aren't married don't get this, yet are in the same position

And yet when another "what's the point in marriage" thread comes about people shout down and shrug off the fact that people point things like this out.

I've said time and time again people assuming that the main benefit of marriage is protection in the event of divorce. It's not. It's protection when your other half dies unexpectedly.

Madeira, my last post was in response to user, no need to apologise

The £2k I got was because my dh died before state pension age too, same as your Mum.

The lump sum payment is a very good thing, and I'm glad to hear it's going up. Funerals are so expensive, and I only got statutory sick pay for the six weeks I was off work (I work for local government and only got three days full pay!) so it is very much needed. Even if people do have insurance, they still deserve some support from the state they and their spouse have paid into imo.

Sorry, bythewatersedge, your post wasn't there when I wrote mine: I didn't mean to just repeat you!

Where are people getting 18 years of widow's pension from? It is 52 weeks! from the date of death of the spouse or Civil partner.

With children Widowed Parents Allowance could last upto 18 years if the child stayed in education and the parent didn't remarry.

No one is saying that people who are bereaved shouldn't get help. But you asked if it was cruel to cut the benefit of £450 a month until the youngest child leaves school. Which, as the school leaving age is now 18 and the child could be less than one when their parent dies, could be 18years. The reality is that that is almost £100,000, before any other benefits have been applied. And that's a lot of money that the state has not got.

I am sorry for your loss. My ex husband died of lymphoma non Hodgkins in 2013.

He had an NHS pension and thankfully I still get child maintenance from that until the children hit 18. It has helped so much and it is a pretty generous amount.

I think it sucks OP. I know they are cutting all kinds of benefits, but I hate it. I too think many of the cuts are cruel and this is another cruel cut.

I am really glad to hear you are in a better place now

Its a sad event, obviously but not one that children typically lose a lot of school over, so rarely impacts on the remaining spouses ability to work.

That is bollocks. I wasn't with my ex when he died but the impact it had on my children and their schooling was pretty big. One was traumatised for months and ended up with an eating disorder and missed quite a bit of time from school. The counselling they needed took time away from school and I'm glad I wasn't working because the mess they were in meant they were very clingy towards me and insecure and were sometimes scared to leave my side. If I had still been married to him and he was my sole source of income I have no idea how we would have coped for a while.

They really aren't unusual in their reactions.

Butterfly, it's widowed parents allowance that can be paid for 18 years if the child is a baby when their parent dies, it's a different benefit.

Actually I think having a parent abandon you can be as bad or worse than a bereavement, one there is no choice in and the other is an active choice. Children are left feeling they weren't good enough, deserving enough etc or that the resident parent drove them away.

The fact that some people don't get it isn't a good reason for this group of people not to get it! It doesn't have to be a race to the bottom.

If you think another group should get these payments as well, ie unmarried parents, then start a campaign about that. Don't say "Well these shouldn't get it..." say "Yes they should get it, and so should X..."

From your responses, I'm reaching the conclusion that you are nowhere near resilient enough to actually hear people discuss this.

My resliience is for me to judge, not you.

I would find it harder not to speak up on this for the sake of the parents who are widowed from April than to read responses like yours.

It is not true that bereaved children miss more school. Some do, some don't, some miss less than they did whilst their mother was alive and well. Generally very little schooling is lost.

You may be happy with going along with the fashion for post-truth but I am not. There have been significant studies on this.
*Loss of a parent is one of the most traumatic events a child can face. If loss of a parent reduces investments in children, it can also have long-lasting implications. This study uses parametric and seminonpara-metric matching techniques to estimate how one human capital investment, school enrollment, is affected by a parent's recent death. We analyze data from 600,000 households from Indonesia's National Socioeconomic Survey (Susenas) during 1994–1996. We find a parent's recent death has a large effect on a child's school Enrolment and attendance.

It is true that their motivation suffers. Children who lose a mother can feel that they are no longer special to anyone, and self esteem can go down. Schools are aware of this and respond the best they can. Children who lose a father don't normally get the same knock on affect, but all situations are different.

Again. Not true. Studies show that children suffer just as much from the loss of their loving, involved father as of that of their mother.

You absolutely cannot "rank" the trauma felt by different people in different situations.

Yes I can.
Losing a leg - more trauma. Losing a finger - less trauma.
Same applies for emotional trauma. Watching their loving, wonderful Daddy waste away before their eyes, then get a phone call that he does in hospital with no one to even hold his hand then watch Mummy unable to speak for 10 days - more trauma. Mummy and daddy arguing a lot and then deciding to get a divorce - less trauma.
Clearly there are cases where children experience trauma from abuse or abandonment that might be equal or even worse than bereavement. But I'm not arguing for less for those children.

We have had children celebrate the death of relatives they didn't like. Children don't always feel the social constraints that adults do!

The fuck?
This thread isn't about a creepy old uncle dying.
My children didn't fucking celebrate anything.

Lala that's what most people ARE saying on this thread. I haven't seen anyone say "You shouldn't get this money because I don't as a lone parent." They've been saying yes this support should be out there for bereaved families but please don't make out abandoned children are less deserving.

People have got wound up because the OP made a comparison to lone parents and then they have been told their finances and children's emotional states are not as important as those who lose a parent.

Same applies for emotional trauma. Watching their loving, wonderful Daddy waste away before their eyes, then get a phone call that he does in hospital with no one to even hold his hand then watch Mummy unable to speak for 10 days - more trauma. Mummy and daddy arguing a lot and then deciding to get a divorce - less trauma. - Sorry but you're wrong. Emotional trauma is subjective and depends on many different factors, individual resilience, support network etc.

Actually a child can and often does grieve the loss of a parent who is still alive, for some it can be an extremely traumatic event in their lives and they constantly wonder why their parent doesn't love them enough to be around in their lives. Don't underestimate the emotional pain and heartache of abandoned children.

That is very true. The pain I still feel that my father is alive and well and just doesn't want me is still massive, even at the age of 35. It's caused me huge issues. It is a very traumatic event for sure.

I still don't like the cuts though. But then I don't like many of them, even though I know some had to happen I guess.

There not enough money to go around, our health service is collapsing, they can't afford benefits - it does suck.
Hmm, they could use the thousands in unclaimed benefits each year, or the money wasted on Trident. It is a myth that there is not enough money to go round.

With all these cruel cuts to the vulnerable. What the fuck am I paying my taxes for!!!!!!!!!

I think it should be means tested. If you have the income, buy insurance to cover these situations and leave the pot for those who genuinely can't afford the insurance.

It may end up a two tier system, but I'd rather that than they suddenly cutting the income of all the existing receivers to make it the same for everyone. The same has/will happen with child benefit/tax credits I believe?

People have got wound up because the OP made a comparison to lone parents and then they have been told their finances and children's emotional states are not as important as those who lose a parent.

It's not that they're less important, but the trauma is different.

When a parent chooses to abandon their children, there hasn't been reason why the other parent couldn't work. That's not the same as when the other (surviving) parent has had a sick person to care for long term.

When parents get divorced, they have had plenty of warning that their financial situation might be about to change, you can't compare that to a parents death coming very suddenly out of nowhere. Nor can you compare the shock, and level of ability to work or even function for the remaining parent.

The situations are not the same, and while all children that need state support should get it, sometimes, as adults, there are people that could have done more to help themselves, and there are others who simply didn't have that option.

Race to the bottom fuckingtastic isn't it.

The money is there, it's just being used to pay for private health and admin or being squirrelled out to tax havens. Usually by mates of the government.

There are dozens, thousands, of ways a child may end up traumatised.

Trauma is minimised by stability, love, basic needs and care from someone who puts their interests first.

Another consideration from this is there is no payment available to children who have lost both parents but are over a certain age. If you are seventeen and your parents have died, there is very little help. And these desperately need it.

With all these cruel cuts to the vulnerable. What the fuck am I paying my taxes for!!!!!!!!! - Expenses and bonuses for the big boys and girls.

Just to clarify I don't agree with the cuts but they do fall in line with the rest of benefit cuts and I think if cuts are being made everywhere then I don't necessarily see why widowers should be exempt. Especially as they would be in a no worse financial position than lone parents recieving no help financially/emotionally from the estranged parent.

Not everyone can get life insurance. If you have certain conditions it is impossible.

Yes, dimot. And of course those with health conditions who cannot get life insurance/assurance (or not at anything other than a massive cost) are statistically more likely to die young.