New Zealand, Australia and the United States
What happens to my pension when my partner dies?
Your household stops being paid as a couple and starts being paid as one person, and all three countries handle the drop differently. New Zealand keeps paying the old amount for 28 days. Australia pays a lump sum covering the difference for 14 weeks. The United States has no transition period at all, because it never paid a couple's rate: the smaller of the two payments simply stops, and the survivor keeps the larger. What none of them do is leave the surviving partner on the same money.
The thing nobody plans for
Most retirement planning is done for a household. Two people, one set of bills, two payments arriving. The arithmetic that follows a death is not half of that, because a house costs much the same to run with one person in it, and none of these three countries pretends otherwise for very long.
New Zealand
Australia
United States
New Zealand: 28 days, then the single rate
Section 326 of the Social Security Act 2018 sets the rule. Where someone who was receiving New Zealand Superannuation dies and "leaves a spouse or partner, or a child" who is not entitled to a lump sum accident compensation payment, "that benefit of the person ends 28 days after the date of the person's death."
New Zealand Superannuation is named in the Act's list of specified main benefits, alongside a veteran's pension and the main working age benefits, so it is squarely covered.
Work and Income describes the effect in plainer terms: where the person who died had a partner, "we'll keep paying the client for 28 days". The surviving partner can ask for those payments to be redirected to their own account, though the agency notes that if payments have already gone into the deceased's account, "we can't transfer these to you". Anything paid after the 28 days may be recovered from the estate.
Then the survivor moves onto a single rate. New Zealand Superannuation has more than one of those, and which applies depends on the living situation afterwards rather than on the fact of the death, so a change of household is worth reporting rather than assuming.
One thing that does not change: the deduction of an overseas pension is personal. Your own New Zealand Superannuation is not reduced because your partner received one, so their overseas pension ending does not lift a deduction from you that was never applied to you.
Australia: 14 weeks, as a lump sum
Australia's transition runs longer and is paid differently.
Services Australia describes it as a lump sum "to help you transition to a single income". The eligibility test is about the period before the death: "you both needed to be getting an income support payment for at least the previous 12 months, or a pension."
The amount is worked out as the difference the death makes. It "is usually equal to the total you and your partner would've got as a couple, minus your new single rate", and "it's calculated over a 14 week period, which starts on the day your partner died."
Separately, and this is the part that catches people, the pension itself is reassessed. "When your partner dies, we need to reassess your income and assets. To stay eligible for Age Pension you need to meet the thresholds as a single person."
Read that carefully. A single person's thresholds are lower than a couple's, and the surviving partner may now hold assets that were previously shared. Services Australia is direct about the possible outcome: "If we can't keep paying you, we'll tell you when your payment will stop." A review can be asked for within 13 weeks of being told.
There are asset hardship provisions for someone in severe financial hardship whose assets leave them with little or no pension, and a separate Pension Bonus Bereavement Payment where the partner had registered for the Pension Bonus Scheme and died before successfully claiming. A claim for that one can be made up to 26 weeks after the death.
The United States: no cushion, but a different payment
The American system never pays a couple a couple's rate. Each person has their own benefit built on their own record, so there is nothing to step down from and nothing to bridge.
What happens instead is a switch. Survivor benefits "provide monthly payments to eligible family members of people who worked and paid Social Security taxes before they died", and a surviving spouse can take one.
Two features of that are worth knowing before you need them.
The amount depends on when you claim it. Payments "start at 71.5% of your spouse's benefit and increase the longer you wait to apply", reaching over 75 per cent at 61, over 80 per cent at 63, over 90 per cent at 65, and "up to 100% when you reach your Full Retirement Age for Survivor benefits (between ages 66 and 67)".
You do not get both. The Administration puts it plainly: "If you're eligible for Survivor and another benefit, you'll choose the payment that's best for you. The payments won't be added together." You can switch later, and the example the Administration itself gives is starting on survivor benefits and moving to your own retirement benefit at 70, when it is at its highest.
So the household's two payments become one, and the one that continues is whichever is larger.
There is also a one-time lump sum death payment of $255, available to a spouse or some minor children.
The pattern underneath all three
Whatever the mechanism, the same thing happens. A household built around two payments becomes a household with one, somewhere between four weeks and fourteen weeks after the death, and the survivor's costs do not halve to match.
That is the case for thinking about it in advance rather than at the time, and it is the reason a plan built on a couple's income is worth testing against one person's.
What this guide does not tell you
It does not cover what happens to KiwiSaver, Australian super or a 401(k) or IRA, each of which is its own question and none of which follows the rules above.
It does not cover funeral grants, help with travel costs, or the other one-off assistance each country offers, and it does not cover a survivor who is below pension age.
It does not deal with what happens when the two partners were paid by different countries, which raises the agreement questions the rest of this library covers.
And it does not tell you what any of this is worth in your own case, because every figure here depends on rates and thresholds that move at least once a year.