AIBU to think claiming two state pensions seems unethical?

[CoffeeAndCats3]

I wrote about this on another thread, but thought I'd start my own as it irks me and I'm wondering if IABU.

My parents emigrated from the UK in their early/mid thirties and have never lived in the UK since. They are now late 60's. My Mum told me recently that both her and my Dad are claiming a full UK pension, in addition to a full pension in the country them emigrated to. They don't need this money, but she seemed quite smug about how they can 'double dip' and live the Life of Riley while sitting on a load of money, rental properties etc. I told her it seemed a bit unethical to me, but she didn't understand my viewpoint at all.

How is this possible? She said that they only had to pay their (national insurance?) for a period of time after moving, to then be eligible for the full UK pension on retirement? Can someone explain to me if this is correct, as I half think they've scammed the UK system somehow!

They should just change the law, refund the contributions and stop them taking pensions. It’s absolutely outrageous and I can’t believe successive governments have allowed it to continue when we already have a pensions affordability crisis.

Do you mean this one? It’s closed, it’s at max 6 years retroactive now, and you had to have started making your contributions sufficiently long ago to meet the qualifying years. So for that category of people yes they had that option. More recently than that they have removed the cheaper class of payment for overseas residents so it is no longer a £170 a year now. I put a link earlier with a description.

Ah you don’t mean that one. So why are you also posting saying £170 a year??

There was a scheme that DWP put out a while ago.

It closed in April 2025. If you registered interest with them before the deadline then they allowed temporary special circumstances for people to back pay historical years, right back to 2006.

My friends that still work in this eary and still working through the backlog of voluntary payments as there was a massive uptake.

The usual allowance for voluntary payments is the previous 6 years, so currently people can pay for 2020-2026.

Anyone in the scheme that registered interest, had the ability to pay a lump sum of just under £3200, approx £160-£170 per year at the Class 2 rate (the rates change slightly every year) and this lump sum is enough to give you the full state pension of 12.5k per year.

If you’re living abroad and opt to pay NI its £980 a year, we paid it for the first two years we moved abroad as we weren’t sure then if it would be a permanent move, and if it wasn’t neither of us wanted a gap in our NI payments.

Thats the class 3 rate. People abroad could previously pay the lower class 2 rates but from April this year, that's no longer allowed as the criteria has changed for overseas expats. Everyone now has to pay the higher class 3 rate.

You still get slightly more back than you would pay in so it's still something people will do. It's just no where near the good deal that previous people had.

I've explained all this in my previous posts.

Also if you were employed or self employed while abroad, you should have been entitled to the lower class 2 rates for any periods before April 2026.

You should maybe call them to query it as there's a potential that you may have overpaid, and (sometimes) it's possible to get the difference refunded or allocated to another year if you would prefer that. They do require proof of employment to dispute and recalculate the rates so have any paperwork handy.

I get all that very well, and my contribution is one your friend is working through. My comments are because you’ve portrayed it as current and it’s not. It’s not an option anymore.

I did not once portray it as current. You have misread my posts.

If you read back, particularly my post on page 2, you will see where I've said it was historical.

In NZ I believe you can claim superannuation from another country as well as NZ super, but the NZ amount is reduced on a dollar for dollar basis so you aren't getting more than the standard NZ super. If the overseas super is more than the NZ one then you miss out on anything from NZ.

What you describe is madness OP.

Class 2 basically isn't available anymore for expats after the latest budget.

I disagree with you that it’s ‘unethical’ - presumably your parents have paid into both stage systems in order to qualify for a state pension.
In any case - to my knowledge, the uk government is making this harder to do now as they are increasing the voluntary pension rate for most people who live abroad.

I think you sound quite nasty tbh!

They will have paid contributions and now they'll be paying tax. At least they can be independent.

Why are you so concerned about it? Be glad for your parents.

Advise them not to tell others, it's private. They made a mistake telling you!

Are you talking about Super or pension?

I’m in Aus and they are 2 completely different things. Super is money put aside (compulsory and then voluntary over the compulsory amount) in non-government funds. Pension is completely separate as it’s money from government funds that the government gives you in retirement, the amount of which is based on your assets, which includes Super.

What you describe sounds like pension, not Super? Of course you can pull your Super from another country if you have a Super fund there as well as from your Super fund in your home country as it is ‘private’ money (it’s really like a personal savings account but instead of it just sitting earning interest, it’s pooled with other people’s personal saving and clever people ‘invest’ it to make better money growth for you all), it’s not the government’s money, so why shouldn’t you be able to do that?

Yep. My nan gets English and Irish state pensions. Moved to England from Ireland in her mid-20s.

How do you know they are paying tax? You pay tax in the country you live…

I am talking about state paid superannuation, which is what it is called here (I hate the word pension, it's so old fashioned). Super here describes both what you call pension as well as voluntary non government savings.

The OP is talking about state paid pension also.

Same before we left the UK we paid and have been doing the contributions - although no additional state pension where I am (means tested).

This is what I find frustrating. People are saying that because this is legal, it's perfectly acceptable. Yet those same people often criticise companies for doing exactly the same thing: paying only what they are legally required to pay, or arranging their affairs to take advantage of loopholes.

Why is one considered acceptable and the other considered wrong? In both cases, the individuals or organisations involved are acting within the law and exploiting a loophole or advantage that exists. If we're going to judge one as unethical, surely we should apply the same standard to the other. If it's acceptable for this couple because it's legal, then why isn't it acceptable for companies for the same reason? And no, I don't work for those companies!

This is a weird MN trend. Children, even in their 50s, are bitter about their parents having any hint of financial security beyond working age. It's so bizarre!

It sounds like they have done everything legally though so they haven’t scammed anyone.

Yet those same people often criticise companies for doing exactly the same thing: paying only what they are legally required to pay, or arranging their affairs to take advantage of loopholes

How you know that? Do you have a spreadsheet?
Why would anyone, individual or company, pay more than they are obliged to?

The onus is on governments to close the loopholes, or tighten criteria, which in this case, they have.

I think this was a quirk/ blip in the system that was available for a few years post Brexit. Like most things it only benefitted those able to spare a fairly large lump sum straight away to pay into national insurance.
The way it used to work preBrexit was that changing country within the EU didn't matter too much as your contributions from both countries combined to one full pension.

You can rejoice in the fact that anyone who paid into the uk national insurance system for ten or eleven years before moving to the EU and didn't have thousands of pounds to pay into the UK national insurance simultaneously with their new country is worse off -

if you paid in for less than twelve years, even if you paid for a decade and you yet £0, ever, so you have a hole in your pension despite having been paying at that time.

They had to pay the annual voluntary rate to get full contributions, currently it’s £956.80, this does add up over many years, plus they won’t have been costing us nhs money and crucially won’t cost us for elder care, many people do this because they don’t know if they will return. I plan on paying class 3 myself for 3 years to complete my contributions.

But that is totally incorrect.
You need 10 years to qualify to receive some amount of pension.
If you only have paid in 10 years you get less than a third of a full pension.
You need 35 years NI contributions to receive a full UK pension. Anything in between 10 and 35 years is pro-rata.