My mother is 63 - she has just been diagnosed as having dementia. She has a small occupational pension which she gets paid a meagre sum of about 120 per month. When she was assessed, the Dr said her condition will mean she has got a life expectancy of around 4-8 years, but with the last few years getting increasingly worse to the point where she won't recognise people etc and become increasingly house and then bed bound. We have thought about the impact of this, to the point that we want mum to have as good as few years as possible up to the point where she does deteriate. We've been trying to work out if we can get her pension paid out all in one go so she can enjoy her last few cognitive years without worrying about having to save up for them. My mum paid into a pension fund for all the years that she did work (in between bringing up three kids on her own and in the pre-1990 years when the state cared little about "hard working single parent families" - father had died so no maintenance from him or his estate). Her pension fund when she retired was moderate and based on what she had then and her current life expactancy she is not going to get the benefit of what she paid in all those years. We're obviously not looking for a full refund of that pension fund, but wonder if it is at all possible to get a settlement value of the existing pension fund so she can enjoy it now on a few holidays etc before she gets too ill. Sorry for rambling.
- posted
17 years ago