HI ALL,

I,ve just found this forum today & find it extremely helpful.

I have a question I,d like to put.

Firstly I live in Scotland,

I,m disabled & due to retire on Feb 2014,

I had been separated from my wife for over thirty years & living with another partner,

she passed away a couple of years ago &

to my surprise her works pension automatically came to me as spouse.

We had two sons during our time together & she brought them up by herself without any finacial help from me,

we had no contact in all those years & I wasn,t invited to the funeral.

until my eldest son who was dealing with her affairs informed me about this pension

which obviously I didn,t deserve so I tried to get her employers to transfer it to the boys.

B.T. told me they couldn,t do that as it was in my name so

not knowing what else to do I agreed to transfer the money when it came to my bank account to their accounts.

NOW Im having problems regarding my OAP as due to this pension coming to me

I cannot claim for pension credits as it puts me over the qualifying earnings.

The only advice I,ve had was to tell my sons Im keeping the pension

but since I,ve only just got them back in my life that would be out of the question

as they mean more to me than anything else.

Can someone PLEASE advise me on how to solve this problem.

.I,ve already spoke to citizens advice but they couldn,t help so

Im stuck between a rock & a hard place on this

I find it very unfair that i should be punished financially for something that is out of my control.

Hello, and welcome to CAG. I've moved your post to a new thread where it should get more replies.

Hi,

Thanks for the welcome & sorry for posting in the wrong forum,

can you tell me which forum it has been sent to?.

Hi,

Thanks for the welcome & sorry for posting in the wrong forum,

can you tell me which forum it has been sent to?.

Hello there.

You're on the benefits forum, here's a link.

http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?413457-Private-Pension-Income-and-Pension-Credit&p=4429629#post4429629

My best, HB

Unfortunately if you give away your private pension then you will be seen as depriving yourself of your assets and for means tested benefits, you will be classed as if you still have the money and haven't given it away. So your means tested benefits will be reduced by the amount of your private pension whether or not you decide to keep it.

All I can suggest is you are totally honest with your sons and tell them the truth. Say how much you would love to have given this to them but have found out this situation etc.

Hi Honybee,

Many thanks i,ve either posted a poser of a question or its too long winded as I

haven,t had any response other than yours but hopefully someone will respond.

BILLY.

Hi & thanks for your comment, you are correct in your statement as this is what i was told

when i visited the CAB. Although they did tell me to contact BT to explain the situation

& request they look at it again,I have sent a letter but so far i,ve had no response which

prompted me to submit my question to the forum in the hope there may be some avenue

i may take to futher my situation. I thought of maybe consulting a lawyer to see if there may

be some legal way to have BT change the benefactors name.As for discussing it with my

sons that is out of the question simply because i have no rights to the pension other than

that their mother omitted to change benefactors which probably couldn,t be helped as

she may have thought she would live more than fifty years. Sadly she was taken early

by cancer.