Matilde, a 62-year-old worker, has managed to get the court to recognize her right to early retirement due to disability after the National Social Security Institute denied her a pension. The woman had a recognized degree of disability of 45%, which with complementary social factors reached 47%, and she credited 12,079 days of contributions to Social Security, that is, more than 33 years.
Apparently, this worker requested early retirement due to disability on June 20, 2024, when she was 62 years old. Now, Social Security denied the request, understanding that it did not meet the requirements for ordinary early retirement, that is, the one regulated by article 208 of the General Social Security Law and not the disability regulated by Royal Decree 370/2023. Due to this error, he required the ordinary retirement age and a contribution period calculated as if he were not a person with a disability.
Understanding that it was a case, the woman filed a claim explaining that she was not asking for a normal early retirement, but rather the one provided for people with disabilities, under article 206 bis of the General Law of Social Security and Royal Decree 1851/2009 (previous rule to the current RD 370/2023). Even so, his claim was rejected, so he ended up taking the case to court.
The Barcelona Social Court ruled in favor of the worker, explaining that “the claim can be estimated.” The magistrate took into account that the woman’s degree of disability had been recognized since January 27, 2010 and that her pathologies were related to long-term mental disorders. Furthermore, he understood that his condition fit within the diseases included in the standard, specifically in the “mental illness” section that appears in ANNEX I of the aforementioned Decree.
The ruling also rejects Social Security’s argument of separating the ailments to discuss whether the 45% should be reached with only one of them. Regarding this, the judge recalls that “the physical-psychological state is not susceptible to division into watertight compartments,” so the pathologies must be assessed together.
Why you do have the right to early retirement due to disability
The key to this ruling is that Social Security understood that it was an ordinary early retirement instead of an early retirement due to disability, which has its own requirements. And according to the sentence, he did comply.
In fact, the court sets January 27, 2025 as the decisive moment, the date on which the worker already met the required 15 years of age with the pathology and the recognized degree of disability. For this reason, the ruling ends up estimating the claim and declaring Matilde in a situation of “early retirement due to disability”, with effect from that date and with a regulatory base of 788.38 euros per month.
In other words, you do have the right to this retirement because you had more than 33 years of contributions, you were over the required minimum age and you had a recognized degree of disability of 45% within a pathology contemplated in the standard.