If you or your partner are on a low income and have to arrange a funeral, you may get some help with the costs. A Funeral Payment is a one-off, tax-free payment to help cover the necessary costs of a funeral. This includes:
- The necessary costs of a cremation, or
- The cost of reopening a grave and burial costs, or
- The cost of opening a new grave and burial costs, including any ‘exclusive right of burial fee’ (this includes a reclaimed grave), and
- Certain other expenses such as the cost of the death certificate and certain transport costs, and
- Up to £700 for any other funeral expenses like funeral director’s fees, a coffin and flowers.
You must claim within 3 months of the date of the funeral.
You or your partner must get at least one of the following benefits:
- Income Support
- Income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance
- Income-related Employment and Support Allowance
- Pension Credit
- Working Tax Credit which includes a disability or severe disability element
- Child Tax Credit at a rate higher than the family rate
- Housing Benefit
- Universal Credit.
It must also be reasonable for you or your partner to pay for the funeral. We may need to consider the circumstances of other relatives of the person who has died.
For us to give financial help, the person needs to have been living in the UK when they died, and the funeral usually needs to be held in the UK.
If you get a Funeral Payment, you’ll have to repay this from the estate of the person who died. Their estate includes money, property and other things that they owned. (Any home that is still lived in by a surviving partner or personal things left to relatives do not form part of the estate.)