A widow from the state of Hesse (Germany) will have to return 60,177 euros to the German Pension Insurance after the court confirmed that she collected the widow’s pension for more than 20 years without the income deduction that the law requires to be applied when the beneficiary also collects his own retirement pension. The error was not detected until September 2019, after a crossover between administrations. The woman explained that she had mentioned that she was already receiving a widow’s pension when she applied for retirement from the same insurer, but the Hesse State Social Court, in case L5 R 293/21, rejected it. Explains that there are two pensions with separate accounts, and notifying in the application for one is not equivalent to fulfilling the duty of information in the other. The German Federal Social Court (BSG) upheld the conviction.
According to the ruling, it all begins in August 1996, when her husband dies and she is granted a full widow’s pension, but explaining that if she receives any income replacement benefit in the future (including the compulsory insurance retirement pension), she must notify her as soon as possible. In August 1998, the woman requested her own retirement pension, which was granted and she indicated that she already received a widow’s pension, but she did not complete a key procedure, which was to inform the body that paid her the widow’s pension that she had begun to collect the retirement pension.
Unlike Spain, in German regulations, this is the decisive point, because the two pensions correspond to different insurance accounts and the duty of information must be fulfilled separately in each of them. In Spain, widow’s and retirement pensions are managed by Social Security.
Now, the insurer did not cross-check its own databases until September 2019. When it did, it detected that the widow had collected widowhood for more than 20 years without the income deduction that the law requires when the surviving spouse also collects his or her own pension. In the German system, income that exceeds a dynamic monthly deductible (1,076.86 euros in 2025, according to vermögenszentrum.de) reduce the widow’s pension by 40%. In this way, the overpayment or improper collection during these years was 60,177 euros.
“The plaintiff herself admitted knowing that she had the obligation to inform”
The woman appealed to the Federal Social Court. His main argument was that he had declared widowhood when requesting retirement from the same insurer, which should have cross-checked the data internally. The court rejected it with a basic principle of the German benefits system: “the beneficiary’s obligation to provide information is intended to initiate a review of the benefit request regardless of the agency’s knowledge”. That the two pensions corresponded to the same entity was irrelevant because they are separate processes, with separate accounts and separate applications.
Regarding the excuse that the regulations were too complex, the court explained that the plaintiff had worked as an administrative employee in an insurance company, in charge of processing applications. Therefore, the court said that “the plaintiff herself admitted knowing that she had the obligation to inform the defendant about her old-age pension”. Overall, he said that it was serious negligence, which in German law allows for retroactive claims even beyond the ordinary ten-year period, as long as the benefit was still being paid when the file was initiated.
What happens in Spain if you collect widowhood and have other income
The German case is not exactly reproduced in Spain because the systems are different in a key point. In Spain, the contributory widow’s pension is not reduced because the beneficiary also receives his or her own retirement. The amount (52% or 70% of the deceased’s regulatory base, depending on family responsibilities) does not vary depending on the pensioner’s own income.
However, there is an equivalent risk for those who receive the minimum supplement. This supplement, which raises low contributory pensions to the minimum guaranteed amount, is conditional on the beneficiary’s annual income not exceeding 9,442 euros without a dependent spouse (or 11,013 euros with a dependent spouse) in 2026, in accordance with Royal Decree 39/2026. If the pensioner begins to collect a second pension and his income exceeds that threshold, he is obliged to notify the INSS within one month of the change occurring. If you do not do so, any overcharged amounts are considered improperly received and may be reclaimed.
Social Security periodically crosses this data with the Tax Agency to detect pensioners who have exceeded the income limit. When the overpayment is detected, the INSS notifies the holder and opens the refund file, regardless of whether the error was also made by the administration. The warning is in the granting resolution, just as in the German case: the system may take a while to detect it, but when it does, it calls back.