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Survivor Benefits may be the answer
Q: My mother and father were married for 24 years and divorced 16 years ago. At the time of applying to her pension, my mother applied for a pension split with my dad. She received pension splitting for three months prior to her death in Dec. 2016. I am the executor of my mother’s estate. My dad is now asking me to contact the CRA to get the portion of his pension back upon my mother’s death.
Is it possible for my Dad to get his money back? How would we go about doing this? Does he need a tax lawyer? As the executor, am I able to assist in this process? What happens to all the money my dad paid into it—that they allocated to my mom who died three months later?
—Ann
A: Ann, when a married couple splits their Canada Pension Plan (CPP) benefits, the surviving spouse cannot receive the balance of the pension of the deceased spouse. The surviving spouse would instead apply for Survivor benefits.
When an individual pension splits with someone to whom they are no longer married the pension split is final—it permanently affects both individuals’ record of earnings upon which the benefits are calculated and it cannot revert back. You can find additional information here.
Since the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) does not administer the CPP program, I would suggest contacting Service Canada for additional information.
Cleo Hamel is a senior tax specialist with American Expat Taxes in Calgary
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I am trying to plan for the future when either I or my wife die in respect CPP. We chose to split our cpp pensions when we reached age 65. We are now 76. I am trying to determine how the survivors pension is calculated as a result of the splitting that we did. My pension was considerably higher than hers when we did split the pensions. I know how the calculations work with no splitting and am wondering how it is different because we chose to split them. Any thoughts ?
Due to the large volume of comments we receive, we regret that we are unable to respond directly to each one. We invite you to email your question to [email protected], where it will be considered for a future response by one of our expert columnists. For personal advice, we suggest consulting with your financial institution or a qualified advisor.
My wife recently died after 49 years of marriage. We were both receiving CPP pensions. She took hers at age 60 and it was smaller than mine because of this and being out of the workforce for child rearing purposes. I deferred my CPP until I was 68 and because of this was entitled to about $1450/month. I felt this was unfair so I applied for pension sharing which resulted in us both getting approximately $1050/month. I have applied for my wife’s survivors pension and I know it is capped. But I feel it should be capped and I should receive the pre sharing amount of $1450/ month to which I am entitled based on my contributions etc. What should happen with my application ?
Due to the large volume of comments we receive, we regret that we are unable to respond directly to each one. We invite you to email your question to [email protected], where it will be considered for a future response by one of our expert columnists. For personal advice, we suggest consulting with your financial institution or a qualified advisor.
a women married and her husband died.Stayed with another man for 12 years He had a heart attack and died.Got both their cpp pension.Stayed 25 years with another man.He went into a nursing home.So she claimed commo law so she can have his cpp pension when he dies.Is that ok?