Pensions
The black hole in Graham’s pension scheme
“I'm a physics teacher and my partner, Jackie is a nursery school teacher. We have decided we want to start our own family, so I started looking at how our finances stacked up. That's when I realised that my pension scheme has a big black hole as far as Jackie is concerned, because we aren't married.
I was worried about what would happen if I were to die? I’d want Jackie and any children we have to be OK. We have insurance to pay off the mortgage, so she would have a roof over her head. But Jackie works part-time and only earns about £5,000 a year. If we had children, she might not work at all for a while. She wouldn’t have enough money on her own to run a home let alone bring up a family.
At the moment we rely mainly on my salary. It's not a fortune, but enough to cover the bills and enjoy ourselves a bit. If I died, Jackie would need to replace some of what I bring in. I thought my pension scheme at work had that covered. But I was wrong!
On the face of it, the scheme is really good. If I died, it pays out a lump sum of twice my salary – which would be £66,000. Jackie would get the lump sum – I’ve filled out a form at work to make sure of that.
The scheme also pays pensions to dependants. A widow – or widower for that matter – would get the same as my pay for the first three months and than a lower amount based on the years I’ve been in the scheme. It wouldn’t be a lot in my case because I’ve only been paying in for ten years, but it would be a couple of thousand a year. That, along with the lump sum, would go some way towards making sure Jackie was alright.
That’s what would happen if we were married. They call these pensions ‘family benefits’ but when you get down to the detail, it turns out ‘family’ doesn’t include an unmarried partner.
Under the rules of my pension scheme, someone is only your dependant if they are related to you. So children can get pensions. You can even have a pension paid to a parent, brother or sister if they rely on you financially, but not to your unmarried partner!
I was really shocked. You’d think in this day and age you’d be treated the same whether you were married or not. So now I've got to either get married or get life insurance.”
Graham, Devon
Make sure you understand your pension and how not being married may effect it. 
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