Thousands of grieving Brits will be able to claim £10,000 in backdated benefits after the government caved to a Supreme Court defeat. A long-awaited legal change was unveiled tonight to extend bereavement benefits to couples with children who live together but are not married. Previously only married parents could claim – but campaigners defeated this policy in the Supreme Court and High Court. Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) ministers have now published a “remedial order” which will extend the benefits to unmarried, grieving partners. Crucially, anyone who would have been eligible since the Supreme Court ruling on 30 August 2018 will be allowed to file a retrospective claim for any payments they would have got since then. It was thought 2,200 bereaved partners a year would benefit, so that now means several thousand will be able to file claims for partners who died years ago. The DWP estimates more than 22,000 extra families will be helped in the next five years to the tune of £320million. However despite the order being promised almost a year ago, grieving partners will not be able to file retrospective claims until spring 2022 at the very earliest. The remedial order will only become law once it has passed through at least 120 sitting days of Parliament. The change will only apply to co-habiting couples with children, not those without kids or who live apart.

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