UK Basic State Pension and J spouses

[banders]

I need to write details for my J wife how to access accounts she isn’t familiar with. One of these is the UK Basic State Pension, but then it occurred to me there may be no point. Does anyone know if Japanese wives can claim any of the UK Basic State Pension in the event of their husbands dying? I’m fully paid up (37 years), Class 2 since I’ve been here. She will have fully paid up kokumin nenkin, but of course no UK pension. Seems the answer should be ‘of course not’, but thought I’d ask anyway.

[beanhead]

I think the answer is that she is not entitled to it.
Best to check with these guys though:
https://www.gov.uk/international-pension-centre

They have an online form in addition to the usual snail-mail.

[banders]

I did look around there but didn't get an answer. Never seen that page so many thanks beanhead! I'll bookmark that one.

[adamu]

If they give you any official information such as a public link or a PDF, let us know.

[Wales4rugbyWC23]

I need to write details for my J wife how to access accounts she isn’t familiar with. One of these is the UK Basic State Pension, but then it occurred to me there may be no point. Does anyone know if Japanese wives can claim any of the UK Basic State Pension in the event of their husbands dying? I’m fully paid up (37 years), Class 2 since I’ve been here. She will have fully paid up kokumin nenkin, but of course no UK pension. Seems the answer should be ‘of course not’, but thought I’d ask anyway.

I can't find the link, but I also put up this question a couple of years ago and most people agreed that your Japanese wife does not inherit your British state pension if you were to die. There maybe one way you could round this and that is for your wife to have paid national contributions if she had lived in the UK or she could pay the voluntary class 2 or 3 National insurance contributions, which need 35 years of contributions. I know somebody who is doing this now, but the Japanese wife had lived in the UK, so she would a need national insurance number to do this.

[kuma]

I need to write details for my J wife how to access accounts she isn’t familiar with. One of these is the UK Basic State Pension, but then it occurred to me there may be no point. Does anyone know if Japanese wives can claim any of the UK Basic State Pension in the event of their husbands dying? I’m fully paid up (37 years), Class 2 since I’ve been here. She will have fully paid up kokumin nenkin, but of course no UK pension. Seems the answer should be ‘of course not’, but thought I’d ask anyway.

My understanding is that there is no benefit for the spouse in the event of the UK state pension recipient's death. There will be a process that needs going through to inform the UK government of the death so that the pension payments can be stopped.

I understand it is possible to register the death with the UK authorities: https://www.gov.uk/register-a-death/y/o ... me_country
Doing so might make it easier to inform UK-based institutions (UK state pension; any UK banks, brokers, private pension providers, etc) of the death. I don't know if this consular death registration unlocks the door to the 'Tell Us Once' service (https://www.gov.uk/after-a-death/organi ... ll-us-once), which would wrap up any affairs with the UK government, eg cancel British passport, stop UK state pension, stop HMRC.

I should get around to writing instructions of my own along these lines. If anyone has more complete answers, I'd be interested to piggyback upon others' research and/or experience.