Deputies seek help for the island’s ‘forgotten widows’
Monday 14th February 2011, 1:00PM GMT.
CAMPAIGNERS fighting for forgotten widows, who they claim were caught out by the closing of a loophole, will plead with Social Security to change its system.
But minister Mark Dorey said the department stood by its decision to change bereavement benefits – an adjustment that was made in 2004.
On Wednesday, Deputies Barry Paint (pictured) and Jane Stephens will ask the board to accept the fact that by stopping a widow’s pension, a number of women had struggled to support themselves.
The weekly benefit, that lasted until a widow remarried or earned a pension in their own right at 65, was changed in favour of a bereavement allowance – a weekly payment that lasted up to a year.
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What a pity Barry had not been made Minister of Social Security before 2003 as he would never have allowed this awful situation to happen.
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I am a widow and have been for eighteen years I receive a widows pension, my daughter is also a widow and she gets a different type because she has a son who is 16 and still at school and she is urging him to stay because under this new ruling if he leaves now she will loose it and her home as she will no longer be able to afford it, she will get nothing at all.
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I am a widow since 2006 and receive no money as the rules have changed but when Jersey changed their rules in 2001 they gave a survivors pension to both men and women until they are 65 or remarry.
How come Jersey can to do it and Guernsey can’t?
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I am a widow since 2007 how they put through this rule change in 2004 is beyond me. They certainly hit the vulnerable.
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