Following the death of his or her husband or wife, the surviving spouse may claim payment of a survivor's pension. This pension corresponds to part of the retirement pension that the deceased husband or wife received or could have received. It is paid, according to the employment status of the deceased, by Social Security and by the supplementary pension schemes on which he depends. The payment of a survivor's pension is paid under certain conditions, even to the retired spouse who receives a retirement pension, but according to the level of his own resources.
On the death of a pensioner, the pension plans, basic and supplementary, provide for the payment of part of his pension rights to his surviving spouse. This payment is called the survivor's pension.
The amount of the survivor's pension is equal to a percentage of the retirement pension received by the deceased:54% of the pension for the basic pension schemes for private sector employees, on average 60% for the supplementary pension schemes for private sector, and 50% of the pension from civil service pension schemes.
The survivor's pension is not paid to the surviving spouse automatically (he must apply for it from the Retirement Insurance), and the latter must meet certain conditions, such as being at least 55 years old to receive this pension, which may vary from one pension plan to another.
However, the condition common to all schemes for claiming to receive a survivor's pension is that it is mandatory to have been married to the deceased. As a result, couples in civil partnerships or cohabiting cannot benefit from a survivor's pension on the death of their spouse.
Then, the conditions for benefiting from a survivor's pension vary according to the pension schemes. In the basic pension schemes for employees in the private sector, the liberal professions, craftsmen, traders, industrialists, agricultural employees and non-employees, the survivor's pension is paid subject to means testing.
Civil service pension schemes, on the other hand, do not condition the payment of a survivor's pension on a means test.
The surviving spouse, himself retired and compensated, can claim a survivor's pension. It is a right. However, given the conditions of resources required in most pension schemes (except those of the public service), a survivor's pension may or may not be combined with a retirement pension, depending on the income of the surviving spouse.
The resources of the surviving spouse taken into account to open up rights to a survivor's pension naturally include their basic and supplementary retirement pensions if they themselves are retired.
Thus, a survivor's pension from the basic pension scheme will not be granted if the income of the surviving spouse exceeds 21,320 euros per year if he lives alone, or 34,112 euros if he lives as a couple. For this calculation, the resources of the surviving spouse taken into account benefit from a 30% reduction if they are aged 55 or over.
If the resources of the surviving spouse are lower than these ceilings, the right to a survivor's pension is open. Its amount is then defined as follows:if the cumulative survivor's pension and the amount of resources exceed these ceilings, the survivor's pension is not paid in full but is reduced by the amount of this excess.
