Tens of thousands of women could be owed money from the government due to a little known state pension rule, says Martin Lewis.
The money expert has shared the story of a woman who received a cheque from the DWP for more than £82,100 after she watched one of Martin Lewis’s The Martin Lewis Money Show Live programmes on ITV1 and discovered that she was eligible for the money.
Martin says women have historically been underpaid state pensions, and one such instance of this affects women who are widowed.
Martin heard from a woman called Gill, who had checked her pension eligibility with the pension service after watching Martin Lewis.
Gill, 77, and her husband Robin married nearly 20 years ago but sadly, two years later he was diagnosed with cancer.
When Robin died, Gill was being paid £90 a week, and Robin had a state pension too when he died.
Gill said: “I thought that pension died with him.”
Gill heard pensions advice from Martin Lewis, where he said women who had been married could be eligible to claim their late husband’s state pension.
Gill added: “I went onto the pensions website but I didn’t find it very easy to work out if I was entitled to it, so I did a very simple letter to the pensions office.
“To my surprise I had a phone call from a young lady who said in fact I had been underpaid. She said it is rather a lot of money, she said ‘are you sitting down?’.
“I said, yes, and she said it’s £82,100. I was stunned, I didn’t know what to say. It’s astounding. My first reaction was wow I’ve got all this money but when I started to think about it, this was money I was entitled to 12 years ago.”
Another woman found she was owed £41,000 after following Martin’s advice.
They wrote to Martin and said: “After seeing Martin Lewis’s show in March 2021 about women historically being underpaid their pensions, I got in touch with DWP to query my mother’s state pension.
“After several months of chasing and appeals, she finally received a payout of more than £41,000 in January 2022, relating to 20 years of underpayments.”
