The death of a loved one can be a difficult time for everyone involved and it can be confusing for our members and their families.

Support and guidance

Bereavement is a personal experience which can affect people in different ways. It can be a very emotional, stressful and often traumatic time and the emotions, including grief, can be overwhelming when having to comply with procedures such as registering the death and informing pension schemes (occupational, state and/or private pension), and banks or dealing with other personal and financial arrangements.

Should you want access to help and further information, support and guidance is available at:

• Gov.uk: Bereavement help and support

• NHS: Grief after bereavement or loss

Registration

One of the first procedures is to register the death. There is some departmental advice on how to do this and begin fulfilling legal and regulatory obligations on the Gov.uk step-by-step guide What to do when someone dies.

Tell Us Once service

Helpfully, the government’s Tell Us Once service allows you to inform all the relevant government departments in one go when someone dies. The service will inform government departments and agencies, e.g. HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), UK Passport Agency, Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) and local councils.

If you don’t use this service or choose not to, you can alternatively let the relevant organisations know about the death yourself. There is departmental guidance on how to do this on the Gov.uk Report the death without a Tell Us Once reference number.

Financial implications

There may be financial implications for surviving spouses or other family/next of kin in terms of entitlement to state benefits and support, tax, allowances and additional entitlements, i.e. funeral costs. Further guidance on these issues is available on the Gov.uk Your benefits, tax and pension after the death of a partner page.

The Teachers’ Pension Scheme (England and Wales)

The Teachers’ Pension Scheme (TPS) must be informed about the death in order to put in place any death benefits that you may be eligible to receive as a surviving spouse or in the capacity of a beneficiary/dependant.

The easiest way to inform the TPS is by using the online form Death notification and application for death benefits.

Alternatively, you can call the contact centre on 0345 606 6166 between 8.30am and 6pm Monday to Friday.

The TPS will need to verify the deceased member’s service record and salary details etc. and process any death benefits, subject to eligibility. You may have to complete some application forms and apply for probate and a Power of Attorney to access benefits - the TPS will be able to advise on this further.

Pre-2007 survivor pensions

There is an archaic and intrusive rule applicable to surviving spouses of deceased members who had pensionable service under the scheme prior to 1 January 2007. Such spouses lost their teachers’ survivor pension, such as widow’s pension, if they remarried or entered into a civil partnership or ‘interdependent relationship’.

This rule was removed by the TPS from 1 January 2007 and the surviving spouses of deceased members with service pre-2007 are able to retain their teacher’s survivor pension if they remarried or entered into a civil partnership or ‘interdependent relationship’.

There is now, therefore, a two-tier system in terms of regulations being applied to teachers’ adult survivor pensions, pre- and post-2007. In reality, there are fewer and fewer recipients of pre-2007 teachers’ survivor pensions and they are increasingly elderly and represent a very small cohort of dependants with entitlements under the TPS, so the cost of allowing recipients to retain these pensions is negligible.

Nonetheless, Teachers’ Pensions regularly surveys these recipients in order to determine whether they continue to satisfy qualifying eligibility criteria, e.g. whether they have remarried, entered into a civil partnership, cohabitation or an ‘interdependent relationship’. If they have, their survivor’s pension is withdrawn.

In some cases, recipients of pre-2007 survivor pensions do not realise that they will lose their pension if they enter into another legal or ‘interdependent relationship’. They can unwittingly end up having to pay back tens of thousands of pounds of their pension under these circumstances, causing genuine hardship.

NASUWT finds this intrusive, insensitive and unnecessary and is campaigning for all recipients of survivor pensions to be allowed to find happiness in another relationship after they have been bereaved without their pension being at risk.

NASUWT does not consider that it is in the public interest to try to claw back any survivor pensions, given that the TPS regulations have now been changed. See our Pre-2007 Adult Survivor Pensions advice page.

Further details and FAQs are available on the TPS website and the Teachers’ Pensions page Informing Teachers’ Pensions when someone passes away.

Teachers’ Pension Scheme
11b Lingfield Point
Darlington
DL1 1AX
www.teacherspensions.co.uk
Call: 0345 606 6166 (BT local rate number)
WhatsApp messaging: 07545 932848 (Please note that it may take up to two working days to receive a response and this number doesn’t allow phone calls.)

The Pension Service
Post Handling Site A
Wolverhampton
WV98 1AF
www.gov.uk/contact-pension-service
Telephone: 0800 731 0469