Death benefits

If you die before your husband or wife, co-habiting partner or civil partner, he or she, as your widower or widow, co-habiting partner or civil partner, will become entitled to part of your pension for the rest of his or her life. 

Local Government dependant spouse’s, co-habiting partner’s and civil partner’s pensions no longer cease upon re-marriage to, co-habitation with, or re-registration of a civil partnership with, another person. 

Long-term Widow's Pension

If you pass away before your wife she will become entitled to a long-term widow's pension.

A long-term widow's pension is fully inflation proofed and the pension is payable for life.

Long-term Widower's Pension

If you pass away before your husband he will become entitled to a long-term widower's pension.

If you retired after 1 April 1998 the calculation of the spouses pension is based on your membership built up since 1 April 1972. To this is added full inflation proofing and the pension is payable for life.

Co-habiting Partnership Pensions

Providing you have actively contributed to the LGPS at some point since 1 April 2008 your co-habiting partner may be eligible to receive a survivor's pension that becomes payable in the event of your death.

For a co-habiting partnership to be valid both you and your partner must satisfy the following conditions at your date of death:

• Your co-habitation had been continuous for at least 2 years at the date of death
• You are free to marry or enter into a civil partnership at any time
• You are living together as if husband and wife or civil partners
• You are not living with a third person as if husband or wife or civil partners
• Either your partner is financially dependent upon you or you are financially inter-dependent upon each other

Your co-habiting partner's long-term pension is fully inflation proofed and payable for life.

Children's Pensions

Children's pensions are also payable for so long as eligible children remain following your death. To be eligible your children must be:

• a natural or adopted child who was born before, on, or in the case of a natural child, within 12 months' of the member's death
• a step child or a child accepted by the deceased member as a member of the family (excluding a child sponsored by the member through a registered charity) who was dependent on the member at the date of death.

In addition to the above eligible children must also meet the following conditions:

• be under age 18
• be aged 18 or over and under 23 and in full-time education or vocational training (although your pension fund can continue to treat the child as an eligible child even if there has been a break in full-time education or vocational training)
• be unable to engage in gainful employment because of physical or mental impairment
• has not reached the age of 23
• the impairment is, in the opinion of an independent registered medical practitioner, likely to be permanent and the child was dependent on you at the date of your death because of that mental or physical impairment. In this context gainful employment means paid employment for not less than 30 hours in each week for a period of not less than 12 months

The administering authority may, at their discretion, ignore a break in training or education and you can ask your administering authority what their policy is on this matter.

Long-term Civil Partner's Pension

If you pass away before your civil partner they will become entitled to a long-term civil partner's pension based on your membership built up since 6 April 1988.

Your civil partner's long-term pension is fully inflation-proofed and payable for life.

Reporting the death of a scheme member

To report the death of a retired or dependant scheme member please contact our payroll team directly (see details below). We are also part of the Tell Us Once (TUO) service. TUO allows people to report a death to most Government organisations in one go rather than contacting organisations separately. 

Please visit our Reporting a Death section for more information.

Contacting the Pension Payroll team

We recently launched a new dedicated helpline number for payroll queries  - 01628 796670

If you are calling from abroad please use +44 1628 796670

You can also email your payroll queries to info@berkshirepensions.org.uk  

If you would like to visit our offices to discuss a query in person, please contact us in advance to book an appointment.