To qualify for a widow’s, widower’s or surviving civil partner’s contributory pension, you must satisfy certain social insurance conditions and be a widow, widower or (since 1 January 2011) a surviving civil partner and not in a cohabiting relationship. The pension remains payable while you remain widowed or a surviving civil partner. Section 124(3) of the Social Welfare (Consolidation) Act 2005, states that “a widow shall be disqualified from receiving a pension if and so long as he or she and any person are cohabiting as husband and wife”. Therefore, if one re-marries, enters a new civil partnership or starts to cohabit, it is no longer payable.
The general principles underlying social welfare payments are to insure to provide for a particular contingency, and to meet the income need to the individual while the contingency continues. In the context of the insurance based schemes which provide for contingencies such as bereavement, it is important that the payments such as the widow’s, widower’s or surviving civil partner’s contributory pension should cease when the contingency has ceased.
The EEC Equality Directive 79/9 and the subsequent Supreme Court case (Hyland v Minister for Social Welfare, 1989 ) led to the change in the treatment of non-married cohabiting couples in the social welfare code. The Court ruled that it was unconstitutional for the total income a married couple received in social welfare benefits to be less than the couple would have received if they were unmarried and cohabiting.
