The Superior Court of Justice of Extremadura has denied a retirement pension to a woman with a recognized disability of 70% due to osteoarthritis and morbid obesity who, as she alleged in the trial, was unable to renew your registration as a job seeker because he was in a wheelchair. The court could not verify that she had not been registered as a job seeker for more than two years and therefore, the so-called parenthesis doctrine could not be applied to her, which allows these contribution periods to be ignored and thus be able to access the pension.
As explained in the ruling STSJ EXT 262/2026, of February 16, 2026, which can be consulted in the Portal of the Judicial Powerit all begins when this worker, born in 1959, requested a retirement pension from Social Security and was denied. The reason is that it did not meet the requirements for registration or a situation similar to registration required by article 165.1 of the General Social Security Law.
Social Security verified that since September 7, 2021, the plaintiff had not renewed her registration as a job seeker with the SEXPE (Extremeño Public Employment Service), and that this gap extended until the date of requesting retirement, accumulating more than two years outside the system. The administrative claim was also dismissed in May 2025.
Upon arriving at the TSJ in Extremadura, the worker claimed that she had not renewed her registration because she was in a wheelchair and was morbidly obese and could not travel to the employment office. However, they did not agree with him.
Why the disability was not enough in court
The key to this ruling is in the two requirements that must be met, which are having the minimum contribution period covered (the specific gap, two years within the last fifteen) and being registered or assimilated to registration at the time the right arises. The worker had problems with the second.
For those workers with difficulties in meeting the specific deficiency, there is a Supreme Court doctrine known as the “parenthesis doctrine.” That is, it allows the periods in which the worker has not contributed to be excluded from the calculation of the pension, as long as it is demonstrated that said absence of contributions was not voluntary and in this way access to the pension.
But for unsubsidized involuntary unemployment to count as a situation assimilated to registration, the same jurisprudence requires that registration as a job seeker be maintained. “without significant interruptions”because this registration is proof that the worker has not left the labor market voluntarily.
An interruption of more than two years, without proven justification, does not meet this criterion. The TSJ explains that, if it had been proven that the illness was the cause of the lack of renewal, the situation could have been different. But at the supplication stage, only the facts that the trial judge considered proven count.
As the Badajoz court did not accredit them, and the factual review was rejected, the court could not assess the real cause of the interruption. “Regardless of whether the plaintiff’s illness could allow, in application of the parenthesis doctrine, the specific deficiency requirement to be considered fulfilled”concludes the sentence, “The truth is that the plaintiff, at the time of accessing retirement, was not in a discharged status or assimilated to discharge”.