§ 162. Retired employees and certain widows and dependents eligible for supplemental pensions. 1. State retired employees and state retired teachers shall be entitled to receive, one month after such retirement, monthly supplemental pension payments as provided in this article. 2. Any municipality is hereby authorized and empowered to adopt and amend a local law, ordinance or resolution providing for monthly supplemental pension payments both to local retired employees thereof and local retired teachers of a school district located therein. Any county, city, town or village is hereby authorized and empowered to adopt and amend local laws, ordinances and resolutions, effective for specified periods of not to exceed three years each, subject to extension or renewal for specified periods of not to exceed three years each, to provide for monthly supplemental pension payments for widows, dependent children or dependent parents of deceased members or deceased retired members of the uniformed force of a police department or fire department. Any such local law, ordinance or resolution shall prescribe equitable methods for providing supplemental pensions and computing the amounts thereof and may contain provisions necessary and appropriate for proper administration, including a provision requiring the filing of verified applications for such payments. 3. The monthly supplemental pensions paid to local retired employees shall not exceed the monthly supplemental pensions paid to state retired employees pursuant to this article. The monthly supplemental pensions paid to local retired teachers shall not exceed the monthly supplemental pensions paid to state retired teachers pursuant to this article. The total of all the annual retirement allowances or pension payments to the widow or widower, dependent children and dependent parents of a deceased member or deceased retired member of the uniformed force of a police department or a fire department shall not be increased by more than an amount which, when added to all annual retirement allowances and pension payments being made to all of such beneficiaries, and the annual retirement allowances or pension payments which could have been made to them in lieu of any lump sum settlement that was made instead, on account of the death of any such police officer or firefighter, by such county, city, town or village, or by a retirement or pension system or plan on behalf of the county, city, town or village, shall not exceed a total of twelve hundred dollars per annum. 4. As used herein the following terms shall include:

(a) "Widow". Only the widow, who has not remarried, of a deceased member or deceased retired member of the uniformed force of a police or fire department;

(b) "Dependent children". Only children under the age of eighteen of a deceased member or deceased retired member of the uniformed force of a police or fire department;

(c) "Dependent parents". Only a father or mother, or both collectively if both are living, of the deceased member or deceased retired member of the uniformed force of a police or fire department, where neither dependent widow nor dependent children under age eighteen survive such member or retired member.