Pension for elderly woman

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Annieindublin

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I recently stepped in to help my parents with their financial matters. Mum was never really too bothered beyond managing the housekeeping and it even took years to get her to accept a cheque book and a credit card.
Dad made sure everything was in joint name years ago. They have a few savings accounts and a large sum in a state savings scheme that matures in 2029. They are 88 and 90.
Dad has a civil service pension, paid in fortnightly. Dad retired at 61 with 40+ years service. Mum was a SAHM since they got married in 1959. Marriage bar, she was in the ESB as a clerical worker after leaving school. Between kids and mothers and mothers in law she was fully occupied the rest of her life. Youngest kid was born in 1976

What surprised me is that mum has zero income, I recall asking dad years ago about mums pension entitlements, she only paid stamps for a few years so he assumed she had no entitlement. Probably correct but after researching my own entitlements I came across home maker credits. But these seem to apply only to home makers born after 1946.

Please note: The Homemaker's Scheme was introduced on 6 April 1994. Only periods of care you provided after this date can be taken into account, up to a maximum of 20 years.

You can only be awarded HomeCaring Periods if you were born on or after 1 September 1946. A HomeCaring period may be awarded for each week not already covered by a paid or credited social insurance contribution.

https://services.mywelfare.ie/en/topics/pensions-and-older-people/pension-caring-supports/


Just checking here if I missed something or there was another scheme somewhere I missed.

Dads pension is about €4,500 a month and they own their home and have about €100k in savings so I think she’d fail any means test for the non contributory pension.
 
First thing to do is check if, on your father's death, a civil service widow's pension will be payable to your mother, if she survives him.

Given your father's age, he may have joined the civil service at a time when this benefit didn't come as standard. When the widow's pension was added to the civil service scheme (at varying dates, depending on which agency you were employed in, but mostly in the late 1960s) an extra contribution was payable in respect of it, and existing members were given the right to opt out, so that they wouldn't have to pay the extra contribution. Those who did opt out all got a further option in, I think, 1984 to opt in.

If your father chose both times not to opt in then, on his death, no civil service pension is payable to your mother. It's probably unlikely that he made this choice, given that he was a married man. But, if he did, your mother would now not be in a good situation. So check it out.

As to a social welfare pension, I'm not aware of any scheme that would give your mother a pension now. But my knowledge in this area is limited.
 
Dad did indeed opt for that cover for her. He was in the civil service, various departments, mainly finance all his career aside from a couple of early years in the ESB.
I understand that she will get half his pension. He is worried now that while half the pension seemed like a good idea at the time the household bills don’t get reduced by 50% when one spouse passes.
Hence the current review of his finances.

I don’t know if she’ll qualify for a widows pension, given that she’ll be getting his civil service widows pension.
 
Annieindublin said:
I don’t know if she’ll qualify for a widows pension, given that she’ll be getting his civil service widows pension.
Click to expand...
Qualification criteria are outlined here:

Widow's, Widower's or Surviving Civil Partner's (Contributory) Pension

A Widow's, Widower's or Surviving Civil Partner's contributory pension and related social welfare benefits may be payable if either the deceased person or their spouse/civil partner has enough PRSI contributions.
www.citizensinformation.ie www.citizensinformation.ie
 
Annieindublin said:
I understand that she will get half his pension. He is worried now that while half the pension seemed like a good idea at the time the household bills don’t get reduced by 50% when one spouse passes.
Hence the current review of his finances.
Click to expand...

I take your point. But half of the pension is vastly better than none of it, so once your father is in the widows scheme you're not looking at a disastrous situation here.

So far as the current review of their finances goes, I suggest an important question is this; how much do your parents actually spend each month? It may be less than the €4,500 which they receive. And whatever they spend will not halve when one of them dies, but it will go down somewhat. So the gap you're looking to cover, should your father die first, is not the gap between €2,250 and €4,500; it's the gap between €2,250 and your mother's likely monthly expenditure needs. There's a good chance that that's a signficantly smaller gap.

Then, you have the €100k in savings. That's likely sufficient to cover the gap for quite a number of years.

Of course, the situation won't be stable. Your mother's needs may rise. (Or your father's may, if he is the survivor.) They might require residential care. Or, less drastic but still quite expensive, they might need to buy in home services, support or companionship. That could dramatically increase the rate at which the €100k savings get depleted. To be honest, in that scenario, even if your mother did have a social welfare pension, savings would likely get depleted at a fair rate.

At that point you fall back on the equity in the house. If your parents. or the survivor of them, require residential care, there's the fair deal scheme. If you're looking to fund home care and support, there are reverse mortgage equity release schemes.

All in all, even without a social welfare pension, your parents have a reasonable financial cushion. The absense of a social welfare pension may affect the amount you and your siblings, if any, inherit when the time comes, but I don't think it threatens your parents' comfort or their ability to mee their material needs while they live.
 
We are reasonably confident that they have sufficient and we aren’t overly concerned about needing to contribute or dip into the equity in the house.
Currently they actually don’t spend all their pension, but their healthy current account has dipped a lot in the past 2 years. They have some carers they pay as the HSE provision is limited, gardening is not cheap and they’ve had a series of expensive repairs and improvements to the house, eg a ramp added for access and a new accessible bathroom. Plus VHI which has literally been a life saver for my dad but is not cheap. Their household bills are high, like a lot of old folk they like a warm house.

Dad is more likely to pass first given his current health. So he worries about mum and also he is developing dementia and is aware of this and this adds to his worries,

Residential care is their fear, they don’t want to leave home so we plan to keep them at home as long as we can. We’ll figure it out and chip in if needed.

The query was more my surprise that mum has apparently zero entitlement after a lifetime of caring for others and I wanted to check if we were missing something.
 
That’s good to know

It is kinda shocking that her generation aren’t entitled to anything in their own right

I wonder how the cut off date was selected.

Her contributions were only for a few years and I guess the marriage gratuity was compensation for that.
 
You might want to investigate whether your mother is entitled to a Qualified Adult payment.
 
I think that only applied to the social welfare pension. Dads only pension is the civil service one he doesn’t get the old age pension.
 
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Your father would have been Class D or B. Both provide for a contributory survivor's pension:

Class D benefits​

  • Carer’s Benefit
  • Guardian’s Payment Contributory
  • Occupational Injuries Benefits
  • Parent’s Benefit
  • Widow’s, Widower’s or Surviving Civil Partner’s Contributory Pension
 
Yes
Dads pension is good and they are ok and she has cover if he passes first. And she’d get the contributory widows pension which would be helpful as half his pension dies with him.

I was just checking if we were missing something. Seems odd that theres a cohort that get nothing. I know this cohort would get the means tested non contributory OAP. Not applicable here. They have means,

But the rules for SAHMs changed and they can claim for years at home, and dads too and other carers, but there’s a cut off point for those claims. And I didn’t realise that. A lot of women of her generation were barred from working outside the home and therefore out of the pension loop.

She probably worked from age 17 to 24… not a lot I know. And to be fair while there was a marriage bar that was public sector, lots of women worked in shops factories etc after marriage it was a choice mum and dad made. They used to joke about their teacher friends being well catered for in their old age when I was a kid. I didn’t realise what they meant.

It’s been an interesting exercise looking into this.
 
You might also consider getting "Enduring Power of Attorney'' for your dads affairs, especially if he's in the early stages of dementia and eventually cant make decisions for himself.

https://decisionsupportservice.ie/services/enduring-power-attorney-epa
 
We have already set up EAP for both of them. Dad is aware of his growing issues and is getting treatment which is actually better than I expected.

I’ll get an application underway for mum for coap.
 
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