My husband paid for the State pension all his working life. When he retired he got the extra pension for me.
He died three years ago and since then I have been receiving the widow’s pension.
I also have a private pension. I have a large sum of money on deposit and also State saving certificates.
I would like to know if, when I die, my family will be liable to pay back my State pension?
Ms AC, email
The widow or widower’s pension is one of those welfare payments that can sometimes cause a little concern for people – in large part because it is often paid not on the basis of your own circumstances but of those of your former spouse or civil partner.
The temptation for many people is to just say nothing and continue to take the money, some or all of which has been allocated to regular spending. But, as in your case, there is often a little niggle at the back of your mind over what may happen if the situation is audited at some point by welfare officials.
Bad and all as any such review could be during our lifetime, people are justifiably more alarmed by the prospect of their grieving loved ones getting landed with a substantial financial penalty after we die. A payment of up to €253.30 a week may not seem a lot but it can quickly mount up over time if it had to be repaid.
The good news here is that you don’t need to worry. No one is going to come knocking on your door or that of your children after you die.
Essentially, if your husband’s PRSI record was sufficiently strong to merit a contributory State pension, it will be equally valid for a widow’s pension for you. Alternatively, your own social insurance record may meet the criteria.
The key here is that this is a “contributory” welfare payment. It is paid out to you on the basis of social insurance contributions made during your working lives by either you or your husband.
Your reference to your other pension and your savings leads me to think you fear you may not meet a means test for this payment but means tests do not apply for contributory welfare payments, only to non-contributory ones that are paid according to financial need.
There is some understandable confusion because of your status as an adult dependent, or qualified adult, when your husband was alive where you, not he, were receiving an additional payment over and above his pension. There are income rules that apply to adult dependents.
Full payment
To get the full adult dependent payment of €168.70 (under the age of 66) or €227 above that, you would have needed to have income – including from your pension and from savings – of less than €100 a week. The rate of payment falls gradually for an adult dependent with income of between €100 and €3,410 a week and is not payable at all above €310 a week. Those payment figures relate to 2022; they would have been lower before your husband’s death.
However, once he died, you will have qualified for the widow’s pension on the back of his qualification for the State pension in his latter years – with no means test.
The rules on what is formally known as the Widow’s, Widower’s or Surviving Civil Partner’s (Contributory) Pension are very clear. Essentially either you or your former husband will have to have enough social insurance contributions to qualify. The big thing is that you cannot mix and match contributions. Either your husband had made enough PRSI payments over his working life, or you have; you cannot add each other’s social insurance payments together.
So how many contributions do you need?
This is a two-pronged assessment. The first hurdle is that either you or your husband must have made a minimum of 260 paid social insurance contributions before their retirement — or death if that happened before retirement. Whoever meets that threshold must also have an average of 24 paid or credited PRSI weekly payments for every year of their working life, or, alternatively, an average of 39 paid or credited weekly social insurance payments in each of the five years before retirement or death.
PRSI contributions aside, the other qualifications are fairly straightforward. First, understandably, you must be a widow, a widower or a surviving civil partner. But, and this can sometimes trip people up, you also must not be living with another person in a new relationship.
Threshold of 24 weeks
How much you are paid depends on the number of contributions. If you, or in this case more likely your husband, meets the five-year weekly average of 39 paid or credited PRSI payments, you will get the maximum pension, which is €213.50 if you are below the age of 66 and €253,50 once you turn 66.
Only if you or your husband fall short of that average of 39 does welfare look at the longer social insurance payment history of a minimum of 24 weekly payments a year over the working lifetime. If, over that working life, either you or your husband has paid an average of 48 weekly payments every year, you will get the maximum pension payment.
If it is 47 or less, the payment is reduced, though not dramatically. If the weekly average of the qualifying person is between 36 and 47 per annum, the payment falls to €210.30 a week if you are younger than 66, and to €248.30 for anyone older.
For PRSI records where the weekly average of the qualifying person is between 24 and 35 per annum, the weekly pension payment will be €207.80 below the age of 66 and €242.50 thereafter.
The bottom line for you is that, according to your letter, your husband had a full PRSI record and would have been receiving his State pension at the maximum rate – currently €253.30 a week. Therefore you qualify for a full widow’s pension even if your own PRSI record would have qualified you only for a much lower contributory State pension, or none at all.
There is a quirk with the widow’s/widower’s pension that is not relevant to you but might be of use to some other people. Older public servants – those who were first employed before April 5th, 1995 – pay (or paid) a lower rate of PRSI which does not qualify them for most contributory welfare payments, including the State contributory pension. However, despite this, they are specifically eligible to apply for the widow’s, widower’s or surviving civil partner payment.
Please send your queries to Dominic Coyle, Q&A, The Irish Times, 24-28 Tara Street Dublin 2, or by email to dominic.coyle@irishtimes.com. This column is a reader service and is not intended to replace professional advice
