Do Police Widows Get A Pension? It Depends On The Year

Do police widows get a pension? Yes. A surviving spouse or civil partner receives a survivor's pension under every version of the police pension scheme. But the amount, and crucially whether it carries on if you ever remarry, is not settled by one national rule. It is settled by which scheme the officer was in — and that comes down to when he joined and how long he served.

There are three schemes, and they are almost always referred to by their year: the 1987 scheme, the 2006 scheme and the 2015 scheme. They sit on top of one another rather than replacing each other cleanly, so a great many officers have service in more than one. For a survivor, the consequence is blunt: two families with an almost identical loss can end up with very different pensions, and different rules about what happens if the widow builds a new life afterwards.

This page is written for the serving officer trying to find out, on his wife's behalf, what she would actually receive — and for the widow who has been handed a scheme booklet and cannot tell which paragraphs apply to her. The first thing to establish, before anything else, is which scheme or schemes the service falls under. Everything else follows from that.

The short answer, and why it depends on the year

A police pension is not one pension. It is three, introduced in 1987, 2006 and 2015, and each was designed differently. The 1987 and 2006 schemes are final-salary arrangements, where the pension is built from the officer's rank and pay near the end of service. The 2015 scheme is a career-average arrangement, where each year of service adds a slice based on that year's pay. A survivor's pension is calculated as a proportion of the member's own pension in every case, but because the member's pension is worked out differently in each scheme, the survivor's figure differs too.

So when someone asks whether police widows get a pension, the honest answer is: yes, a survivor's pension is payable under all three, but you cannot know the amount, or whether it lasts for life, until you know which scheme applies. The rest of this page walks through how to establish that, and then what each scheme does with a surviving spouse — including the one rule that catches families out more than any other, which is what happens on remarriage.

Three schemes stacked on one career

The reason so many officers have benefits in more than one scheme is that the changes were staged, not clean breaks.

As a rough guide: officers who joined before April 2006 were in the 1987 scheme; those who joined between April 2006 and March 2015 were in the 2006 scheme; and from 1 April 2015 all serving officers began building benefits in the 2015 scheme, whatever they had been in before. That last move is the important one. An officer with twenty years in on the old scheme did not lose it — the service already built up stays in the old scheme and is paid under its rules, while service from 2015 onwards accrues in the new one.

There is a further complication worth knowing about. Because of a legal ruling on the way the 2015 changes were introduced, many officers have had part of their more recent service placed back into their old scheme for a period, and are being given a choice about how that stretch of service is treated. The upshot for a survivor is that a single pension can draw on more than one set of rules, and the remarriage treatment of one slice of service may differ from another. This is exactly why a blanket answer is unsafe, and why the practical step is to ask the administrator to break the position down by period.

How to find out which scheme applies

You do not need to guess. The scheme is identifiable from paperwork the officer almost certainly has.

• Joining date and service history. The date of joining is the first clue, and any period of part-time service, a career break or a rejoin after resigning can shift things, so treat the joining date as a starting point rather than the final answer.
• Annual benefit statements. These usually name the scheme and show the benefits built up. If more than one scheme is listed, that confirms mixed service.
• Payslips and award letters. Pension contribution lines and any retirement or ill-health award letter typically identify the scheme.
• The force's pensions team or scheme administrator. This is the reliable route. Ask them, in writing, to confirm which scheme covers each period of service and how a survivor's pension would be calculated.

If the officer has died and the paperwork cannot be found, the government's Pension Tracing Service can point you to the right administrator. When you write to them, it is worth asking in the same letter what lump sum death benefit is payable and who it goes to, because that is governed by a nomination the officer made rather than by the survivor's pension rules — the difference between an expression of wish and a binding nomination is a twenty-minute job that decides where a lump sum lands. The separate question of what a police pension pays when an officer dies while still serving is covered in our guide to a police pension and death in service.

The 1987 scheme and the remarriage rule

This is the one that surprises people, and it is the reason the year matters so much.

Under the 1987 scheme a widow, widower or civil partner receives a survivor's pension — but historically that pension stopped if the survivor remarried, formed a new civil partnership, or began living with a new partner as if married. It was not reduced or paused; it ended. The thinking behind it belonged to an earlier era, and for decades it meant a bereaved husband or wife had a stark, and frankly unfair, choice between a new relationship and the pension earned by the person they had lost.

Two things soften that picture, and both need checking against the specific case rather than assumed. First, later changes allowed the survivors of officers who died on duty, or as a result of an injury received in the execution of duty, to keep the survivor's pension for life even after remarrying or moving in with a new partner. Second, a survivor's pension that has stopped on remarriage can in some circumstances be restored if that later relationship itself ends. Neither is automatic, and the detail depends on the officer's circumstances, so this is a question to put to the administrator directly rather than reading off a booklet.

If remarriage is a live question for a survivor with a 1987-scheme pension, it is worth understanding how differently other pensions handle the same event, because the police rule is not universal. We set the comparison out in how a private widow's pension and the State Pension treat remarriage differently, which shows how one new marriage can end one income and leave another untouched.

The 2006 and 2015 schemes: a pension for life

The later schemes took a more generous line, and this is where the year cuts the other way.

Under both the 2006 scheme and the 2015 scheme, a surviving spouse's or civil partner's pension is generally payable for life and does not stop on remarriage, a new civil partnership or cohabitation. A widow in the newer arrangements is not forced to choose between a future relationship and the pension her husband built. So an officer who transferred, or who has substantial service after 2015, may leave a survivor in a materially different position on this single point than a colleague of the same rank whose service was almost entirely pre-2006.

The amount, in each scheme, is a set proportion of the member's pension, defined by the scheme rules. It is deliberately not stated as a fixed figure here, because the fraction and the way it is applied depend on the scheme and on whether the officer died in service, after leaving with preserved benefits, or after retiring — and because a survivor should have the exact number confirmed by the administrator rather than taken from a general article. What is safe to say is that a survivor's pension is a fraction of the member's, not the whole of it, which matters a great deal when a household has been running on that income in full.

Unmarried partners: the sharpest divide

If the couple were not married and had not formed a civil partnership, the year of the scheme matters even more, because this is where the schemes diverge most.

The 1987 scheme was built around marriage and, later, civil partnership. It made no general provision for an unmarried partner, so a long-standing cohabiting partner of an officer whose service sits entirely in that scheme may have no automatic entitlement to a survivor's pension at all. The 2015 scheme, by contrast, provides for an eligible cohabiting partner who meets the relationship conditions the scheme sets — typically that the couple were living together in an exclusive, committed relationship, were free to marry, and were financially dependent or interdependent. The 2006 scheme sits between the two, and its treatment of an unmarried partner is something to confirm with the force rather than assume in either direction.

Where a cohabiting partner does qualify, the entitlement is rarely handed over on trust. The administrator will ask for evidence that the relationship met the conditions at the date of death, and gathering it after a bereavement is far harder than it sounds — which is why we have set out separately what trustees and administrators actually ask for to prove you were their partner. If any nomination or partner declaration form exists for the scheme, completing and updating it while both partners are alive makes that later proof much easier.

What it is worth, and the gap it can leave

Even at its most generous, a police survivor's pension is a proportion of the member's pension, not a replacement for the household's whole income. For an older couple whose outgoings have fallen and whose mortgage is cleared, it may be enough. For a younger family with a mortgage and children at home, a fraction of one salary-linked pension can fall well short of what the household was actually living on.

The 1987-scheme remarriage rule sharpens that risk further, because a survivor's pension that could in principle end on remarriage is not a foundation a person can build the next decades of their life around with any certainty. There is also the State Pension to factor in, and it offers less help here than many expect: police officers were contracted out of the additional State Pension for much of their careers, which limits what a widow can inherit through it — a point we unpack in our note on SERPS, the state second pension and contracting out. More broadly, if you are wondering whether there is still a widow's pension in the UK at all, the general answer has changed a great deal, and a scheme pension is now doing more of the work that the state once did.

None of this is a reason to panic, but it is a reason to do the arithmetic while there is still time to act on it. If, once you have the survivor's figure confirmed, there is a shortfall between what your wife or husband would receive and what the household would actually need, some families choose to close that gap with their own cover written to pay a regular income. You can get life insurance quotes and have an FCA-authorised broker size a policy against the specific gap rather than a guessed one. The point is to fill a measured shortfall, not to duplicate a pension you already have.

Scotland and Northern Ireland

Police pensions are not administered on a single UK-wide basis, so a survivor's position outside England and Wales is governed by separate rules, not by the schemes described above.

In Scotland, police officers belong to the Police Pension Scheme (Scotland), administered through the Scottish Public Pensions Agency, which runs its own 1987, 2006 and 2015 arrangements. In Northern Ireland, officers of the Police Service of Northern Ireland are covered by a distinct Northern Ireland scheme. The broad shape is similar — final-salary legacy schemes and a career-average scheme from 2015, with survivor pensions payable to a spouse, civil partner and, in the newer arrangements, an eligible partner — but the detail, including any remarriage condition, sits in separate regulations. A survivor in Scotland or Northern Ireland should ask their own scheme administrator to confirm the position rather than relying on the England and Wales rules.

Whichever nation applies, two follow-on questions come up again and again after a death: whether you need a grant of probate before a pension can be dealt with, which we cover in do I need probate for my husband's pension, and how the wider death-benefit picture fits together, which is set out across our guide to pensions, nominations and death benefits.

Frequently asked questions

Do police widows get a pension for life?

A surviving spouse or civil partner receives a survivor's pension under all three police schemes, but the oldest, the 1987 scheme, historically stopped payment on remarriage, a new civil partnership or cohabitation, with later changes allowing survivors of officers who died on duty to keep it for life. The 2006 and 2015 schemes are more generous, and a survivor's pension under them is generally payable for life regardless of remarriage. Because the answer turns on the scheme, confirm it with the force's pensions team.

Which police pension scheme am I in?

Broadly, officers who joined before April 2006 were in the 1987 scheme, those who joined between then and March 2015 in the 2006 scheme, and all serving officers moved to the 2015 scheme from 1 April 2015 while keeping the benefits already built up. Your force's pensions team can confirm your own service history, and it is worth asking them to set out each separate period, because part-time service, breaks and the transition to the 2015 scheme mean many officers hold benefits in more than one.

Does an unmarried partner get a police survivor's pension?

The 2015 scheme provides for a surviving partner who meets the relationship conditions, while the earlier schemes were built around spouses and civil partners, so a cohabiting partner of an officer with only older service may not qualify. Because the position depends on when the service was accrued, ask for a written answer covering each separate period of service, and keep any partner declaration or nomination form current so the relationship can be evidenced if it is ever needed.