Upon the death of any active or retired employee of a city maintaining a city employees’ pension fund under this chapter, leaving a surviving spouse or minor child, or surviving dependent father or mother, there shall be paid out of the fund as follows:

1.    To the surviving spouse as long as the surviving spouse remains unmarried, a sum equal to two-thirds of the pension to which the employee would have been entitled, but not less than forty dollars per month.

2.    If there is no surviving spouse, or if such spouse shall die or remarry, then to the dependent father and mother, if both survive, or to either dependent parent if one survives, the sum of forty dollars per month.

3.    To the father or mother of each surviving child, if such parent survives, for the benefit of such surviving child, until the surviving child shall arrive at the age of eighteen years, a sum not to exceed twenty-five dollars per month, and in case no parent of any such surviving child survives, then to the guardian of each surviving child a sum not to exceed twenty-five dollars per month until the surviving child shall arrive at the age of eighteen years.

The aggregate of all such payments shall not exceed the amount provided for in the plan and in no event more than sixty percent of the highest three-year average earnings of such employee during the most recent two hundred forty months of the employee’s employment, if the employee was employed that long, and if not, during the total period of the employee’s employment, or the maximum amount fixed by the governing body by ordinance.