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Where Taxpayers and Advisers Meet

Inherited state second pension

GW
Posts:22
Joined:Wed Aug 06, 2008 3:22 pm
Inherited state second pension

Postby GW » Sun Jul 04, 2021 11:18 am

Hi,

My wife and I are both approaching 80 and both have SERPS and graduated pension (under the "old" state pension scheme).

I've been trying to find out how much of our SERPS and graduated pension we can each "inherit" in the event that one of us dies but there appears to be no way of calculating this. I've obviously looked at the gov.uk and other websites and can see that, based on our respective dates of birth, we can each inherit some of our state second pension (ie SERPS and graduated pension) but there appears to be no calculator to enable the inherited pension to be calculated accurately.

In desperation, I wrote to the DWP in mid-April this year asking then to tell me how to calculate our inherited pensions but, having not received a response by early July, I called the DWP only to be told that they had "not received" (ie lost) my letter!

I even called the Pension Advisory Service (now called Money Helper, I think) but they were unable to tell me how to calculate this and simply referred me to the relevant gov.uk webpage.

Does anyone have any idea how this is calculated? I know the the amount that can be inherited depends on date of birth and is "banded" - the gov.uk website simply states that we can inherit a "maximum" amount for each band but does not tell me how to calculate the exact amount - I assume that if our birthdays fall in the middle of a band, we will inherit less than the maximum for that band. It also seems to ignore graduated pension but I have read elsewhere that we can each inherit 50% of our spouses graduated pension.

Any help would be much appreciated.

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