minhan

Hi, I'm looking for advice from people that have similar experience. My hubby is Brit, worked in the US for 4 years and he had 24 of the 40 work credits that need to have to receive retirement benefits. He had some credits in the UK to receive basic pension. I saw an article about the totalisation agreement between USA and UK yet we don't understand whether he can combine work credits of US and UK for his pension. Just wondering anyone claim any combined pension?

How benefits can be paid

If you have social security credits in both the United States and the United Kingdom, you may be eligible for benefits from one or both countries. If you meet all the basic requirements under one country’s system, you will get a regular benefit from that country. If you do not meet the basic requirements, the Agreement may help you qualify for a benefit as explained below.

• Benefits from the United States - If you do not have enough work credits under the U.S. system to qualify for regular benefits, you may be able to qualify for a partial benefit from the United States based on both United States and United Kingdom credits. However, to be eligible to have your U.K. credits counted, you must have earned at least six credits (generally one and one-half years of work) under the U.S. system. If you already have enough credits under the U.S. system to qualify for a benefit, the United States cannot count your U.K. credits.
• Benefits from the United Kingdom - The United Kingdom provides benefits through a two-tier program:
  1. The first tier, called the basic pension, is payable to workers who meet a minimum length of work requirement. Under the Agreement, if you do not have enough credits under the U.K. system, your U.S. credits can be counted. To be eligible to have your United States and United Kingdom credits counted, you must have at least one year of coverage credited under the U.K. system.

dunroving

I don't think you can get a "combined pension". As far as I know, what happens is this (fake example, as I'm not 100% up to date with UK and US requirements and don't want to give wrong numbers).

Imagine that:
To receive any pension in Country A, you need at least 10 years of contributions to qualify. You only have 7.
To receive any pension in Country B, you need at least 10 years of contributions to qualify. You only have 5.
Country A and Country B have a totalisation agreement. This means:
For Country A, you can get recognition for your 5 years in Country B in order to qualify (7 + 5 = 12; more than 10). You wouldn't get "12 years' worth" of pension, but you would receive 7/10 of whatever amount you would receive if you had 10 qualifying years.
For Country B, you can get recognition for your 7 years in Country A in order to qualify (5 + 12 = 12; more than 10). You wouldn't get "12 years' worth" of pension, but you would receive 5/10 of whatever amount you would receive if you had 10 qualifying years.

I *think* that's sort of how it works. All the totalisation agreement does is allow you to meet the minimum qualifying years to receive something (rather than nothing).

minhan

Thank you for your explanation. As expat working in different countries, he didn't have enough "time" in each country to meet the basic / minimum basic pension. Just a slim hope that they allow to combine the total of working years in America and UK to at least get a basic pension.

christmasoompa

He didn't need time working in the UK to qualify for a full UK pension - he could have made voluntary contributions from anywhere in the world (usually at a much lower rate than he'd pay if working in the UK!). It's worth him looking in to that asap, as they've just extended the deadline for buying back extra years, which may well be a very good investment for him.

durham_lad

Good point.

Even after we had retired and moved back to England my wife and I continued to make voluntary NI contributions as we were retired and had no jobs paying into the system.

Pulaski

He would have to be younger than retirement age to stand any chance of being permitted to make additional voluntary contributions, as once you reach retirement age that door slams shut.

minhan

ah, we did the calculation of voluntary contributions and it did work out well (great ROI) but we were just to check whether the credits from US can be useful, if that's the case, we don't need to do voluntary contribution.

minhan

He's in the early 50... so he still has lots of years available to him for voluntary contributions, it's just that we have our private pensions and also we'd like to know whether we can use the credits from America.