My husband suddenly died at 59 will I get any of his state pension in the future? STEVE WEBB replies

My husband passed away suddenly three-and-a-half years ago at the age of 59. 

He worked for the NHS and retired at 55 as he had officers' mental health status. I received half of his works pension. 

I also worked for the NHS for approximately 35 years but three months before my husband passed away, I took redundancy as my health was not good.

We planed to spend time together and thought we could manage financially on his works pension until he received his state pension. 

He paid into his state pension for over 40 years. He was a high earner and worked full- time. 

When my husband's state pension year arrives will I be entitled to any of his state pension? If I am not entitled to anything, where does all the money he paid in go to? 

My late husband died at the age of 59 - am I entitled to his state pension?

Steve Webb replies: I was very sorry to read that you lost your husband at a young age, robbing you and him of your plans to enjoy retirement together.

You ask a perfectly fair question about what happened to the National Insurance Contributions which your husband paid in over a full working life.

If we start with the point in time when you were newly widowed, your husband’s NI contributions do come into play at this point, albeit only slightly.

Where you are of working age and your spouse or civil partner dies, you may be entitled to a Bereavement Support Payment. This is payable on condition that your late spouse paid a full year’s National Insurance at some point since 1975 (or if he died because of an accident at work or a disease caused by work).

If you had dependent children (for whom you were getting Child Benefit) at the time you were widowed, you would have been entitled to a lump sum Bereavement Support Payment of £3,500, followed by 18 monthly payments of £350. This now also applies to parents who were living together as a couple when one died.

If you had no dependent children, you would have been entitled to a lump sum of £2,500, and 18 monthly payments of £100.

In all cases, these payments are tax free.

Obviously, these payments are a small fraction of the amount of National Insurance that your husband would have paid in over his working life, and also only a small fraction of the state pension he could have received if he had lived.

In terms of your position when you reach state pension age, I’m afraid it is very unlikely that there will be anything for you to inherit in respect of your late husband’s contributions.

As you may know, both you and your late husband come under the post 2016 ‘new state pension’ system.

The idea of this system is to help each individual to build up a decent pension in their own right, as soon as they reach pension age, rather than depending on the contributions of a spouse, ex spouse or late spouse.

Unfortunately, this means that in most cases, you are unlikely to inherit anything. Note that anything you did inherit would fall due when you reach state pension age rather than when your husband would have reached pension age.

The one scenario in which you might inherit something would be if your husband had already built up a significant state pension under the old rules by the time the system changed in 2016.

If his basic pension plus additional state pension by that point was already more than the new flat rate figure, any excess is known as a ‘protected payment’. You would be entitled to 50 per cent of this protected payment as an addition to your state pension.

However, because your husband was only in his early fifties when the system changed in 2016, it is unlikely that he would have built up a significant amount in excess of the new flat rate.

In addition, it sounds like he previously paid in to a ‘contracted out’ workplace pension from which you now draw an income as his widow. 

This meant he would have paid a reduced (‘contracted out’) rate of NI for those years and makes it even less likely he would have had a large state pension for you to inherit a share.

Turning now to your wider question about what happened to your husband’s contributions, the honest answer is that they were used as he paid them in to fund the retirement pensions of the generation in retirement. 

Then, when he retired, the contributions of those in work today would have been used to pay his pension.

Tragically, of course, your husband did not live long enough to receive a pension, and so ended up paying far more in to the system than he was to get back.

Understandably, many people feel that such a system is unfair, and there is a risk that this situation could become more common if state pension ages continue to rise.

We are currently in a transition from a pension age of 66 to 67, and a move to 68 has already been set in legislation. 

But a state pension age review has recently been undertaken and submitted to government and there is a likelihood that further and faster pension age increases may be on the cards. 

This would increase the chance of people not reaching pension age at all, or of only drawing a pension for a few years.

In a submission with my colleagues at LCP to this review, we suggested that there ought to be some sort of guarantee so that you, or your heirs, would always get a payout of at least five years’ worth of state pension once you reached pension age.

We didn’t go into detail on the position of those who don’t even reach pension age, but the logic of ‘something for something’ would be that the heirs of those, such as your husband, who died prematurely, would also receive some sort of guaranteed minimum payout. 

This could be funded by part of the savings that will be generated by any further increases in the state pension age.

If you are interested in reading more about this idea, you can find it at: insights.lcp.com/rs/032-PAO-331/images/LCP-Where-next-for-State-Pension-Age-November-2025.pdf?

Has Steve Webb helped you? 

Steve Webb will publish his 500th column for This is Money in a few weeks' time, writes This is Money. 

It's a double celebration because he marked his tenth anniversary as our retirement agony uncle earlier this year.

Did you write in over the past decade and get a reply from Steve that helped with your finances? Or do you recall a column where you learned something important that made a difference to you personally?

One of Steve's most memorable achievements was discovering that more than a hundred thousand elderly women were being underpaid some £800million in state pension. 

Were you one of those affected by the scandal, what did it mean to you, and how did you spend your payout?

We would love to hear from you. Write and tell us your story at pensionquestions@thisismoney.co.uk. Please put ANNIVERSARY in the subject line, and we might publish some of your messages (anonymously) in a special feature when Steve reaches his 500th column milestone next month.

Ask Steve Webb a pension question

Former Pensions Minister Steve Webb is This Is Money's Agony Uncle.

He is ready to answer your questions, whether you are still saving, in the process of stopping work, or juggling your finances in retirement.

Steve left the Department of Work and Pensions after the May 2015 election. He is now a partner at actuary and consulting firm Lane Clark & Peacock.

If you would like to ask Steve a question about pensions, please email him at pensionquestions@thisismoney.co.uk.

Steve will do his best to reply to your message in a forthcoming column, but he won't be able to answer everyone or correspond privately with readers. Nothing in his replies constitutes regulated financial advice. Published questions are sometimes edited for brevity or other reasons.

Please include a daytime contact number with your message - this will be kept confidential and not used for marketing purposes.

If Steve is unable to answer your question, you can also contact MoneyHelper, a Government-backed organisation which gives free assistance on pensions to the public. It can be found here and its number is 0800 011 3797.

Steve receives many questions about state pension forecasts and COPE ¿ the Contracted Out Pension Equivalent. If you are writing to Steve on this topic, he responds to a typical reader question here. It includes links to Steve's several earlier columns about state pension forecasts and contracting out, which might be helpful.  

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