6 x or 12 x!
I get (well I wouldn't coz I'd be dead, of course) 2 x gross salary for death in service and the widow (in my case) gets 6/12 of my pay then half of my pension accrued had I retired because of ill health a year after my death (if that makes sense), oh, and child dependants in full-time education up to 23 get a pension. 12 or 6 x salary is huge if there is also a survivor's pension. We have written the DIS payments into surprisingly flexible trusts for IHT purposes as Jol advises above.
I'm looking into the cost of term life assurance to replace the 2 yrs + 6/12 DIS as I may have to come out of it soon because of the inexorable reduction in lifetime allowance and the unpredictability of the size of the (non-existent) pension pot in the Ponzi scheme I belong to... it's calculated as (20x pension)+lump sum adjusted for inflation so one cannot predict what's going to happen - wild swings in the theoretical pot with inflation over the last few years; if there is 5% inflation and a 1% pay rise (not that we've had a pay rise for ?5 years) one busts the yearly allowance and then if inflation is low one appears to have made zero contributions even if 5 figure sums have been removed from salary and the same put in by the employer.
Though many on this forum can't moan that they're hard up (me included) G.O. really is hammering those he can go for easily - earning enough to be able to be squeezed hard, and too few in number to make a difference at the ballot box, but not earning enough to warrant the very special tax planning the really high earners can use. Ironic that I've never been taxed as fiercely as now, under a Conservative administration.
Oh, and for those of you living, or with parents in London and other areas with high house prices, the DOJ has floated plans to cut the cost of filing for probate from £215 to zero for small estates, then a very steep curve from £300 to ...... £20,000 if the estate (before IHT) is £2M - potentially a £40,000 hit if there are two deaths in quick succession - say a £2M estate, two allowances of £325k = IHT on 1.25M = £0.5M, plus £40k probate fees = effectively 42% IHT (assuming the probate fees are deductible) rather than 40%.. sneaky eh?
