The Superior Court of Justice of the Basque Country has denied a widow’s pension to a woman whose husband died just three months after getting married, thus ruling in favor of Social Security. Although the widow claimed that she had maintained an emotional relationship for more than 15 years, the court explains that she could not demonstrate a stable and notable cohabitation during the two years prior to death, an essential requirement in these cases according to article 219.2 of the General Social Security Law.
The woman, Azucena, married Luis Alberto in April 2023 and he died in July of the same year due to a common illness. After the death, she requested a widow’s pension calculated on a regulatory base of 2,727.69 euros per monthbut Social Security only recognized his temporary pension, since the lifetime pension was denied because he did not meet the requirements.
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As explained by Social Security, neither the marriage met the minimum duration of one year, nor were there common children, nor had the period of cohabitation required by the regulations been accredited when the marriage union is very recent. For this reason and despite the claims, the pension was denied, but even so she decided to go to court, where neither the Social Court nor the Superior Court of Justice agreed with her, confirming the Social Security decision.
It is necessary to have two years of coexistence
To understand the reason for the denial, one must know that article 219.2 of the General Social Security Law establishes that, in marriages whose duration is less than one year and in the absence of common children, the widow or widower will only be able to access the life pension if she proves stable and notable cohabitation with the deceased for at least two years immediately prior to death.
That is, this requirement seeks to avoid what are known as “marriages of convenience” or unions formalized with little time just to have the right to a widow’s pension.
In this case, the woman said that she had been in a relationship with the deceased for more than 10 years, but that physical coexistence had to be paralyzed, since she had to return to Colombia to take care of her sick sisters, one of them under her legal guardianship. Furthermore, he argued that this forced separation should not prejudice his right to a pension.
In this sense, the TSJ gave four reasons to deny it. The first is that the registration was from June 2022 (below the 2 years required by the General Social Security Law), the second is why the affected person did not justify the impossibility of physically living together. As a third issue, it was that the deceased’s trips to Colombia do not prove marital or common-law cohabitation and finally, that no technological or documentary evidence was provided to demonstrate that relationship, so the denial of the widow’s pension was more than justified.