When you reach retirement age .....

[Moulin Neuf]

We arrived in France 2 years ago and are just about the end our free medical care on an E106.  We will start paying for medical care for the next few years until my husband reaches 65 years old.  All this I understand.  What do we do then - presumably we will not be eligible for a E121 as we will have been out of the country for 10 years.  How do we convert onto 'free retirement' cover.  My husband is in receipt of a UK govt pension at present.

Jan

 

[Ron Avery]

As I understand it, you will be entitled to an E121 when your husband reaches 65.  When you get it, you take that to CPAM and you will then stop paying into the French system.  I have never heard of a 10 year rule, has anyone else?

[derf]

Not forgetting that some women can get an E121 at age 60 or thereabouts depending on their year of birth.

[Ron Avery]

"Some women can get an E121 at age 60 or thereabouts depending on their year of birth." ............ 

Les  Isn't that only if they paid a full stamp in the UK and receive the UK old age pension at 60?  Or does it apply to all women when they reach age 60.  I though that the qualifier was the UK pension.

[derf]

As far as i know, most women at some time in their life  would have paid a full UK Ni stamp and then would qualify for a pension even if if it's for a pitiful amount.

 

[Senrabbit]

Your state pension is dependent on your Ni contributions. You can make up the difference by making voluntary contributions if you are short. Anyone who want a pension forecast can obtain one from the Dept. of Work and Pensions at Newcastle.

I think that the E121 applies either if you are on incapacity benefit or of retirement age. That age will differ for women born after 1955 (I think)  I am not aware that it is dependent on Ni contributions but you could always ask Peter Owen (??) who knows about these things.

If one partner is on the E121 then they can apply to have their spouse put on to it as well regardless of NI contributions.

 

I have never heard of any 10 year rule either.

[Ron Avery]

[quote]As far as i know, most women at some time in their life would have paid a full UK Ni stamp and then would qualify for a pension even if if it's for a pitiful amount.[/quote]

"most women at some time in their life  would have paid a full UK Ni stamp"

Not so,  Les. Before 1977, a married woman could opt to pay a reduced rate of National Insurance Contributions on her earnings, which would disqualify her from the benefits received from full NI Contributions (full state pension, incapacity benefits etc), but give her a 60% pension through her husband’s contributions when he reached 65.  This ceased to be an option in 1977,

To receive a UK retirement pension at 60, you had to pay the full rate NI. But around 100,000 married women still pay the reduced rate and more than a million women under 60 have paid it at some time.  There is a bit of  a hoohah about it as some women are claiming they did not realise that this would result in them not being entitled to a full pension at age 60, and because the reduced rate in effect, earns them  nothing. They have no rights to a retirement pension, no rights to Jobseeker's Allowance, and no rights to sickness benefit and now it would seem no right to an E121 either.

 

[Moulin Neuf]

Thank you all for your help.

I was not asking about a 10 year rule - it is just the time we will be in France before my husband or I reach retirement age.

I have contacted UK pensions and indeed we are eligible - in fact if we have not received paperwork 4 months before my husband reaches retirement age, we should contact them

Thank you all for your help.

Jan

[Hereford]

Ron:  Don't worry. we married women still get the E121 when we retire. I am only to get £1.29 of "additional" pension based on my own graduated conts. before marriage but will get the basic "married woman's" pension based on husband's contributions. My E121 has already arrived!

However you are right to say that women get a bad deal, you get the £50 or so based on husband anyway and even if you have paid for 40 years you only get the extra to take you up to the full £80 or so. 

Mrs H.

[RayB]

[quote]"Some women can get an E121 at age 60 or thereabouts depending on their year of birth." ............ Les Isn't that only if they paid a full stamp in the UK and receive the UK old age pension at 60...[/quote]

We were on an E106 until 3 months before my wife turned 60 and started to recieve her UK pension. At that time, we got the E121. We asked about charges for the 3-month gap and they said 'forget about it we will cover it'. And they did.

[Ron Avery]

[quote]Ron: Don't worry. we married women still get the E121 when we retire. I am only to get £1.29 of "additional" pension based on my own graduated conts. before marriage but will get the basic "married w...[/quote]

When you retire at what age Mrs H? 

If you paid full stamp yes, you do get your pension and your E121 at 60 and your O/H also gets free health care on the back of your E 121, or are you saying that you got your E121 at 60 but only paid a B rate stamp? 

[Iceni]

I am sorry and some people are going to be upset by this BUT when I got married I was offered the reduced Married Woman's stamp. I declined but there was a form to sign - no signature on the form and you paid the full stamp.

Now I have only 14 months to go I am grateful that I will get a pension in my own right. Not a full pension as I took too long out to look after my children but almost a full pension. I am not gloating - just very grateful. I made some bad decisions with my private pensions (which now are worthless) so I don't suggest I get it right even 5% of the time.

The people who seem to think that the reduced stamp was forced on them or not explained obviously do not remember signing the form or even reading it.  I think that for many years paying a full stamp was not that cost effective as the woman lost her pension when the husband reached 65 and 'they' got the married couples pension. Now, as I understand it, we both get our own pension in our own right.

The reduced SERPS which has also been inflicted on widows of men who paid into this for years is just another step in the reduction of the state pension which I feel will be reduced again and again and made up by 'top-ups' to those that live in the UK.

[Teamedup]

I remember well Iceni that it was not forced on anyone.I worked in a pay dept in the 1960's and the choice was there.  Married women were well aware that they were getting more in  their pay packets than those who paid up. I remember those who paid were rather looked down upon at one point by those that didn't.

Now the memory has faded and they aren't happy. Well as the comment goes, one pays one's money and takes one's choice.

My MIL always paid full stamp, not one other married woman she worked with did. They used to tell her she was mad. She ended up with rather a good pension.

[Maureen]

I paid the 'married women's stamp' as I was advised to all those years ago and since lived to regret it! However yesterday I had a letter from Newcastle saying I was to be awarded a state pension after all. (Took 8 years arriving.) Not enough to make me rich - 39 pence a week , back dated to March 2005 and to be paid yearly just before Christmas. Whoopee! Today I received my E121, which is great.

[Ron Avery]

[quote]I remember well Iceni that it was not forced on anyone.I worked in a pay dept in the 1960's and the choice was there. Married women were well aware that they were getting more in their pay packets t...[/quote]

Firstly nobody on here is moaning about paying a reduced rate stamp or its results.

However as TU said "one pays one's money and takes one's choice"  But that is the whole point of the problem, they paid their money although a lesser amount than the full stamp and are getting NOTHING at all back for it, not a sausage, some people on reduced stamps paid more than those on full stamp in their working lives and will receive NO pension at all in their own right, that is what the real issue is about.

Glad you have got your E121's  Maureen and Mrs H but are you 60+ or 65+?

[Teamedup]

Maureen who on earth 'advised' you. For employers it made not one  bit of difference what so ever, even on reduced stamp there was still a calculation to do on the pay as there were always a few pennies taken in insurance anyway. And the NI cards to be sorted out too. What personnel would say was that women would be about 11 bob a week better off if they reduced their NI payment ( in the 1960's) and they would take it.

If my mother in law from a place where elephants go to die in the heart of the pit villages in the NE of England, who left school at 14 to be a scivvy in a posh girls boarding school understood how it worked, then those with a bit of education even degrees who are now pleading the fifth amendment I find very hard to swallow.  Because I have heard sob stories from some highly educated women now they have poor pensions.

There were those who chose to pay and those that didn't, quite as simple as that, all women had a choice and the pay department would have just set it up within the week whatever the choice, to pay or to not pay.

[Benjamin]

About 20 years or so ago the then UK government hit on this wonderful idea to save the Nation oodles of dosh in the future by offering to give people a lump sum of money to opt out of the state earnings related pension scheme (SERPS). You still stayed in the normal State Retirement scheme but you then had this sum of money to give to those million quid a year bright boys in the Pensions Industry to invest for you and you would be much better off than if you had stayed in SERPs.

My wife took professional advice and chose to opt out of SERPs ( strangely enough I took advice from the same financial advisor and the outcome for me was to stay in the government scheme; something to do with age).

She becomes 60 this year and has had all the pension forecasts from Newcastle and amid the figures is a reduction in pension entitlement of 22 pounds a week because she opted out of SERPs. Fine you say that was her choice. If she now tries to buy an annuity with the pension fund she built up the best annuity rate she can find will pay her 21 pounds per week. When she tackled the financial adviser about this he said that successive governments had so fiddled about with the opting out rules that there was now, and hadn't been for some time, any advantage in being outside SERPs. In fact his company, like most others in the pensions industry, will no longer give advice on this subject.

This is not so much as paying your money and taking your choice but is more about governments encouraging people to do one thing and then changing the rules so as to disadvantage those very same people.

Rant over

 

Benjamin

[Hereford]

In reply to an earlier post:

I am just coming up to 60, but husband is over 65. I was self employed for most of my working life so paid no "stamp" at all, just class 4 contributions for which I get absolutely nothing.

I still feel that married women who paid the full stamp get a a raw deal too. They pay the same as their husbands (ignoring graduated contributions as they are outside of the basis NIRP) but they will only get £30 a week more than those of us who paid nothing.

As an example a friend was widowed within a year of getting her pension. The pension has now been made up to the amount her husband got. This would be exactly the same whether she had paid a full stamp or not. You can only get one NIRP once you are widowed.

I have no compalints about my pension, I chose not to pay in but get my £50 anyway. Not only that but because my husband is ten years older than me we have been getting the same £50 (me being a "dependent wife" ) ever since he reached 65 and we both "retired" from self employment.

This thread has lost sight of the original posting!

Mrs H

 

 

[Benjamin]

But don't they all Mrs H, don't they all?

 

Benjamin