Retirement Income: What Every Woman Should Know

Source: Webster Senior Center News
Linda Slota, Director

At the New England Pension Assistance Project we receive as many calls from women as men regarding their pension rights. Women have good reason to be concerned about their retirement money. On average, they are poorer in old age than men are, and have longer life expectations.

Single older women have poverty rates four times that of older couples. Many women have shorter work histories because they took time off to raise families or care for sick or aging relatives. As a result, women are less likely than men to be entitled to a pension based on their own work, but they may have a claim to a share of their husband's pension, if he has one.

Protections in the law enable a spouse to claim some of a working spouse's pension. A married woman is entitled to a 50% joint and survivor benefit from her husband's private pension unless she waives that right in writing. Many couples may be tempted to have the wife waive that right so they can take thie husband's benefit in a lump sum or take the larger monthly benefit, but doing so will leave her no benefit from her husband's job if he dies before she does. We see many cases where, tragically, this choice has been made with dire cnsequences for the wife. A women should not waive her right to her husband's pension unless she has adequate financial resources in her own right.