There are three benefits available if your partner has died. These are bereavement allowance, bereavement payment and widowed parents allowance.
This is a weekly taxable benefit paid to you for 52 weeks, from the date of your husband, civil partner or wife's death. You must be over age 45 but under pension age when your husband, civil partner or wife dies.
The amount you get depends on your age and your spouse or civil partner's contribution record (but it can also be paid if he or she died as a result of an industrial accident or prescribed industrial disease).
You cannot get bereavement allowance if you are in receipt of widowed parent's allowance but you can get it after widowed parent's allowance ceases to be paid.
You also cannot get bereavement allowance once you have reached the retirement pension age.
This is a tax free lump sum paid to you when your husband, civil partner or wife has died. Payment depends on your spouse or civil partner's contribution record (but it can also be paid if he or she died as a result of an industrial accident or prescribed industrial disease).
It cannot be paid to you once you reach retirement pension age unless your husband/wife was not entitled to retirement pension based on her/his own contributions when s/he died.
Widowed parent's allowance is paid if you are a widow/widower having care of a child or children or are a widow expecting a child.
It is a weekly contributory benefit based on your spouse or civil partner's contribution record (but it can also be paid if he or she died as a result of an industrial accident or prescribed industrial disease).
Payment stops when you reach pension age.
You claim all of these benefits on form BB1, available from your local Department for Work and Pensions office (DWP) or Jobcentre Plus office. You can also download a form from the DWP website at www.jobcentreplus.gov.uk.
In Northern Ireland you can get a form BB1 from the Pensions Service, Windsor House any Social Security or Jobs & Benefits office or the Benefits Shop. You can find out more information by going to the Department for Social Development website at www.dsdni.gov.uk.
You can get help at a local advice centre, such as a citizen's advice bureau. You can get more information about this from our factsheet F15, Finding a local advice centre, which is available at www.disabilityalliance.org/f15.htm.
Information about all these benefits, as well as other help available after a death is in Disability Alliance's Disability Rights Handbook at www.disabilityalliance.org/drh35.htm.
You can obtain copies of our factsheets by contacting Disability Alliance on 020 7247 8776 (voice and minicom) or by fax on 020 7247 8765.
www.disabilityalliance.org - 15 September 2009
