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?

Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Isn't it just!?

I'm sorry if I sounded like I was criticising, I didn't mean it like that, I just meant to make the point that state support imo should be different for the different situations. If I'd known my dh was going to die out of nowhere, then of course we'd have got life insurance and I wouldn't need the widowed parents allowance, but that's not what happened!

Somerville, thank you. I'm sorry for your loss too, and for those of everyone who has been bereaved on this thread

I think non-means tested £450 a month for potentially 18 years is overly generous too. Benefits need to be targeted at those most in need.
-this

Finances have been overly generous for years that why we are in this mess, it's important to differentiate between the rights and wrongs of generosity and charity and living within our means. Morally it would be great to help everyone but in reality that just isn't possible. I would imagine that the benefit in question has an equivalent that will kick in to catch those families most in need. However as someone pointed out it would not be appropriate for all widows to be receiving this without question. We have private insurances that would cushion me or my partner in this eventuality (this isn't that expensive to take out) therefore I for one wouldn't need this kind of government help. I would much rather this money helped a family in real need. The same reason I didn't claim maternity exemption.

The issue with lone parents is a separate disgrace. - Yes but the financially comparison is justifiable. Yet the OP continuously seems to demean the plight of lone parents in general, their financial hardships, the trauma it can have on children and to sniff at a payment of £100 a week as if it's nothing is a bit sickening to those who have had to rely on food banks and seriously financially struggled since becoming lone parents.

Osolea, funny thing is we had life insurance. So if my husband had died I would have been financially more stable. As it stood, we lost our house because he walked out on me and more importantly, his children.

Clopysow - agreed.

Wouldn't they be entitled to other benefits though, such as housing benefit, tax credits, income support, child benefit etc?

I don't disagree with you btw, I think the system is a mess. We seem to be paying very very rich landowners a subsidy to install and run "green" energy wood chip burners (they are basically paid to heat their homes/swimming pools) whilst so many poor people can't even afford basic energy.

Everything seems to be going haywire at the moment, worldwide.

I've just looked back at the OP.

So before the allowance was :

£2000 lump sum
£112.50 a week payments

Now it will be

£3500 lump payment
£100 a week.

Have I read that correct? Is the loss per week £13?

Is it because the £100 a week will now only be for 18 months instead of until the child reaches 18/parent remarries that is the issue?

MargaretCavendish
Stop cut and pasting one sentence of mine and not mentioning the context.
I went on to say that I would be in favour of more support for children of prisoners.

And ClopySow It is not me who has turned this into a hierarchy of grief and suffering. It is everyone who has gone "but why should widows and widowers with dependent children get more than any other lone parent ."

Many of my friends are also lone parents. But most of them do shared parenting with their former partner and get maintenance. Those that don't should be able to get either maintenance or more governmental support. Every time I come across a petition for CM to be legally enforced and defaulters given severe consequences, I have signed it.

But the fact that some absolutely appalling crap parents (mostly fathers) leave their children and ex in penury doesn't mean that the spouse and children of those who cannot support their children because they are dead should be left in penury.
No help after 18 months. 18 months is nothing for someone whose spouse died while she was pregnant, like is likely to be the situation a friend of mine is in. (Husband is in hospice right now.)

I read it as £100 per month? If that's right that's a bit of a drop, and really such a paltry sum

GreyMist

100 per MONTH under new system. Less per week than an hour of bereavement counselling has cost me! (NHS waiting list was more than 2 years wait.)
And only for 18 months.

Noone has said that Somerville.

I agree with some type of reform but to cut the benefit from £450 a month (potentially for 18 years) to £100 a month for a year/18 months is really drastic.

I would rather see a tiered system paying the current £450 a month for the first year and gradually reducing over the next 5 years at which point the additional benefit ends.

Benefits are never going to be "fair". Does a widow with one child get the same amount as a widow with 5 children or is it calculated based on the number of dependents?

I thought I'd misread. Thank you Somerville for clarifying. That is a massive drop and definitely should be challenged.

Benefits are never going to be "fair". Does a widow with one child get the same amount as a widow with 5 children or is it calculated based on the number of dependents?

Good point.

All those pointing out that only married people are entitled to WPA - this is true.
I go on every thread I come across where a poster is weighing up the benefits or not of marriage to say that WPA is an important consideration. As is, even more importantly, next of kin rights.

I'd disagree with means testing it, it just penalises those who try and self support just like the maternity grant, income support etc.

Within eighteen months most have returned to work so it's not an unrealistic time frame. Everyone I know has gone back to work with six months.

It's not like they are cutting all support, lone parents get a huge amount of help from the state unless high earners as it is.

Thanks GreyMist.

Voodoo the amount is primarily based on how many NI contributions the spouse who has passed away had made. I think (but not 100% sure) that it is because it is a benefit that goes right back to when NI was introduced. Whether or not this is fair I don't know.

Another point about it dropping to £100 per month is that this is not set to increase in line with inflation, as current payments are. So in a decade it will be an even more paltry sum.

Those saying that we have to live within our means, wait until they come for you in your ivory towers, you just think youre untouchable right now.

Magna Carta article 61 needs to be enacted

Bereavement benefit is calculated using your late spouses NI contributions and is at different levels depending on that. I looked on it as what my late husband would have got in state pension if he had lived that long. It is up to the £450. I wonder what happens to the deceased persons accumulated NI now?
It was invaluable to me allowing me to reduce my hours at work when I finally gave in to depression a year later. Yes we were insured but securing an income while you sort yourself out and grieve makes a big difference. I had returned to work, determined that everything would carry on regardless but it coughs up with me in the end

SemiNormal The OP oening post said - Widowed parents are lone parents without any shared care with an ex partner. Without any maintenance payments from a former partner. - that is fact. The fact that the state allows non-widowed people to be left without maintenance payments is utterly irrelevant to this issue.

The fact that child maintenance collection is woeful in this country isn't a reason to say that widows and widowers shouldn't get this help.

You wouldn't say someone with a broken leg shouldn't get crutches because someone with a broken arm doesn't - they are two entirely different issues and should be dealt with as such.

This turning on each other and racing to the bottom is exactly what the government wants and it's exactly why people aren't up in arms about the attacks on the most vulnerable people in society. When everyone is feeling the pinch it makes it easier to go for cuts in places that would have been unpalatable before.

When the first articles discussing this came out there was less than 50,000 families in the UK claiming this benefit. It's not like we're paying for millions of families to live the life of riley.

i can see where you're coming from, while she didn't get WPA, when my dad died my mum was only 61 and she did recieve the bereavement payment and 2 years of the widows benefit.

It certainly made a difference, and definitely helped her through the time it took to sort out my dads pensions and her entitlement to them. She was lucky that my brother and i were both adults.

However, in my case, were i to lose my DH, he has death in service cover at work, he also has several pensions and life insurance.. its callous, but he's worth a lot more to me financially if he did than he earns while alive.

That 3.5k and then £100 monthly would be, like it was for mom, enough to cover me while i got his insurances and pensions in place. I wouldn't need it to continue much longer. I would also have time to change my tax credit payments (i'm a sahm/carer for disabled ds)

It would be better if more wives/husbands made sure they were secure if the other died, rather than relying on the benefits system to support them.

It is a myth that there is not enough money to go round.

This, exactly.

DH now works on govt funded engineering projects - having worked on similar projects for the automotive industry in the past. The difference is stark. Automotive projects work to tight deadlines, to get a new car line or plant up and running and profitable.

He finds it incredible that some of his new colleagues have worked on projects for 15 or more years, then had the project cancelled because of out of date technology, and re-started with new technology. He reckons billions in govt money is wasted like this, but the bosses dont seem to care, after all if the govt keeps funding the work, why should they?

Maybe if the govt cut this funding waste, they could afford more benefits all around!!

Op - I really feel for you. A close friend lost her DH 2yrs ago after a long illness. She has 2 older girls, one still in school, one at uni, I cannot imagine how she has coped with her own grief and theirs. She also had to give up work for the last few months, and given that he had his tumour for 15yrs, he wouldn't have been able to get any form of insurance in that time, but guess may have had some before the diagnosis.

I don't know what the answer is, but certainly dropping the monthly allowance by over a quarter is a disgrace, as with other benefit cuts.

from what i have read any widows after April will still be able to get up to £112 per week widowed parents allowance until they stop receiving child allowance, I can not find any info on it changing,

Yanbu. It's horrible to do this. The person who died per pension age will miss outcome a state pension. It is only right that this money goes to the widow/er.

from what i have read any widows after April will still be able to get up to £112 per week widowed parents allowance until they stop receiving child allowance, I can not find any info on it changing,

Widowed parents allowance will only continue for people already on it so technically it won't change. Bereavement Support Payment will be the new one people have to claim and it's different.

Sorry to disappear, very rude of me. It is case in point, however. I'm ill in bed so my parents picked up my children for the weekend. But then one of my children caught sight of a tear-jerker advert raising money for a cancer charity and had a panic attack. So my parents had to drop her back to me.

(I am not saying that people who became lone parents for other reasons also don't have the time to even be ill, before someone accuses me of that.)

Yes, ilovegin112, lalalalyra has it. I linked to a guardian article on the changes, above. It is set to change for those widowed after 5th April.

The government's excuse for this 'reform' is that they are balancing the differences in what widowed parents with dependants get with what widow/ers without dependants get. The former group will lose out massively. The latter will get more than they currently do by a tiny bit. I didn't want to point this out before in case it lead to accusations of comparing the hierarchy of grief - but will now do so since I've been accused of that anyway! FWIW I think it is devastating to lose a spouse at any time. But if I imagine that DH died in his 50's rather than his 30's, so my DC had left home. Well, my household bills would be lower. We'd have paid off more equity in the house and put more into pension so I'd be in a stronger financial position to start with. My adult children would potentially be able to help with funeral costs. I wouldn't have had a therapist telling me that moving them to a smaller house would unsettle them even more. Etc... etc...

Though to be clear, I'm not saying that those who lose their spouse shouldn't be entitled to more. And it clearly is an excuse, anyway.

Currently, everyone gets the £2000 tax free Bereavement Payment.
Those with dependant children also get the taxable £487.71 (max; depending on their spouse's NI payments).
Those between 45 and pension age without dependant children get Bereavement Allowance, a taxable benefit of up to £112.55 a week paid for 52 weeks, again dependant on nat ins of their spouse.

The changed system means that if a spouse or civil partner dies after 5 April there will be a tax-free lump sum of £2,500 if there are no children, or £3,500 if there are. There is then a monthly tax-free payment of £100 for 18 months.
I'm seeing competing reports that those with children will get £350 per month rather than £100 for the 18 months. I'm not sure which is correct. I very much hope the latter.

But 18 months is ridiculous. And this new system totally overlooks the fact that if the parent hadn't died, the state would be paying them that money as pension in the future! Whereas a parent who has paid in for nat insurance and then abandoned their kids will still get their pension paid out. (Which should change IMO - their pension should be paid out early to their dependant children.)

Imperial I agree with you that the current system is grossly unfair for children who lose their only parent. But this new legislation doesn't do anything to improve their situation.