Reminds me of the experiences I had when I was in pensions. Most schemes had a spouses pension. So what would happen would be that once a guy got old they would marry a young lady with 3 kids and if he dies they would receive the pension. So you could end up paying the pension for so long but it had never been funded that way. The pension schemes changed the rules to limit the age difference between the spouses to match the funding assumptions but IIRC those rules were ruled illegal for the existing members.
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Americans can correct me, but IIRC wasnât the state paying out spousal pensions for Civil war veterans well into the 20th Century because of the same age issue? (80 year old marrying an 18 year old. That sort of thing).
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Last child pension ended in 2020.[Last dependent Civil War pension](Irene Triplett - Wikipedia
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Yeah, and the last Civil War spousal pension was also 21st century.
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How did that work? Was the child disabled? The schemes I know only paid child pension till they left Uni latest or if they were disabled for life.
ETA: yeah the Wikipedia page says she had cognitive impairments
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On an aside, for our company DB fund where I am chair 
(the regulator doesnât like it but we managed to explain it coz of my pensions experience) the valuation is done using actual ages for married people.
IIRC the other rule is the spouse you have at retirement when we calculate your benefits is the only legit one.
Our contracts with benefits that apply to spouses have a provision that it only transfers to the first spouse, so it canât chain thru a series of widow(er) marriages. It makes sense that pensions would have similar provisions (but IANAPA).
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