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Interesting article in the Guardian which is about a transgender woman who stayed married and thus never got female legal status and so missed out on the right to a pension. It has been referred to the European Court for an opinion.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/aug/10/supreme-cour...
I'm so glad this didn't happen to me.
Comments
Interesting position...
"Let someone else deal with it, but then if we don't like results we remember brexit and dump it on someone else. Repeat untill we get result we want while no one blames us of being bigots"...
European Court
AFAIK, the ECHR is nothing to do with the EU.
We are cignatories to the European convention on Human Rights. Countries outside the EU are also signatories including Switzerland and Iceland.
Leaving the EU does not mean that we are no longer part of the ECHR.
Well, that's my understanding anyway.
ECHR...
If so, it is even worse. For one, ECHR is extremely politicized. Another thing - I'm not sure that there is a country or government body in any country that is responsible for fulfilling it's rulings. All cases I heard of - rulings were made, sometimes mentioned in the news, that's all. Never heard anything being done to fulfill ECHR ruling.
Errors and happenstance
Poor woman. I hope this works out for her.
The way things worked out for me, the shrink said my GID made me mentally disabled, so I got minimal benefits, and later the benefits got much better until I was old enough to get the aged stipend. So, while I feel like I should have not transitioned, and the penalties with the family were not acceptable, financially it has worked out very well.
I hope that the courts are beneficial to her.
Gwen
She has qualified for the past three years
By the numbers: Only in Great Britain
The lady is 68
Females receive a pension at age 60
Males receive a pension at age 65
The courts must give her a pension even if they claim she is male. She is three yrs past male pension date. Are they claiming she is a non person or what? Is she claiming the five yrs between 60 and 65 for back payment? The legal costs to claim those five yrs would be way more than she would receive even if she won.
The lawyers have a list of several others behind this lady with the same problem and are waiting for a court decision. This will have a positive outcome only if the courts allow the lady her pension plus all legal expense.
Oklahoma born and raised cowgirl
The age of retirement has been increasing.
I had to wait until I was 62.5 years before I could get a pension as female. It would have been longer had I been male. The age of retirement for younger people will be even older. Current estimates are that pensionable ages are working up towards 70 across the board.
The mistake this woman made was not to get full legal status as female which might have caused her to get divorced but she could then have remarried a few years later as same sex marriage became possible. She claimed that as Christian she didn't want to divorce but at the same time the article suggests she believed once married in church, divorce is not possible in the eyes of her god, in which case it would have been a purely legal manoeuvre to obtain her pension.
Angharad
Retirement in the UK
The age at which you can get your state pension is indeed increasing. More severely for women than men and it will probably be 70 for both sexes within 10 years. Part of being treated equally I guess so, you get good bits and bad bits.
You can actually retire earlier if you can afford it.
It seems that I can so I've pulled the plug so I'm giving up work at the end of Sept this year even though it will be a little under two years before I can get my state pension (worth around £150/week). Deep joy.
Samantha
Rising retirement ages is due
Rising retirement ages is due to people not having anough children.
A nations fertility rate needs to be 2.0-2.2 to be stable. Britains is 1.9, if you take away immigrants it drops to 1.7. So not the worst in the world (Singapores fertility rate is 0.5).
Unfortunately, this means that there are less people in the next generation, which means taxes for them will be higher. And the welfare and social net monetary cost is already the largest cost the UK government has. It needs to come down to even make it affordable. One of the way the government is doing this is by increasing the age at which state pensions can be taken, in order to minimise the amount of time a state pension can be paid, which means less money going out.
What about the increase in life expectancy?
Due to improved healthcare this is rising all the time. So yes pensions (the state one) needs to pay out for longer that is did when it was introduced in the late 1940's. Back then (from memory) the average age at which a man would die was 67. Given a pension age of 65.... you do the maths.
My Grandather lived to the ripe old age of 51. My father lived to 76. My mother is 94 and still living on her own.
The birth rate is only half of the equation. The death rate and the average time people will draw their pensions MUST be taken into consideration.
Edit
Oh, and we stop paying into the state pension when we get to retirement age even if we don't take the state pension at that time. We could abolish that. If you are working beyond state retirement age then you keep paying your NI.
I'm still paying NI
It's a tax on self employed people for which they get nothing, no sick pay or pension, it's just a tax. I'm receiving both state and occupational pension.
Angharad
Ah, I get it. You are Self
Ah, I get it. You are Self-employed and paying class 4 NI.
When I was self-employed I was on my company PAYE (and therefore paying Class 1 contributions) to stop the Revenue trying to get me for IR35.
However, it looks like there is good news for you.
https://www.gov.uk/tax-national-insurance-after-state-pensio...
To quote
you still have to pay Class 4 contributions if you have taxable profits from the year you reach State Pension age - the next year, you’ll be exempt
Thanks for that
I'll speak to my accountant.
Angharad