A judge grants the widow's pension without being married for the banquet and the honeymoon

Despite not being legally married nor appearing as a common-law partner, a circumstance for which Social Security refused to pay the widow's benefit to this Valencian woman, the plaintiff has accredited by means of a registration certificate that both lived at the same address since September 2015. Therefore, they would lack three months to reach the five years of uninterrupted relationship similar to the marital relationship required by the regulations on the recognition of pensions.

Nevertheless, the judge considers that we are facing "an exceptional situation", in which it has been proven that the couple "had started a marriage file and due to a formal defect they could not complete it definitively, but they did celebrate a fictitious wedding with banquet and honeymoon.

In addition, according to the report of a private detective, the couple was already in a relationship in 2013 and they have been registered in the same house in Almussafes since September 2015. «Although they had three months left to meet the five-year requirement uninterrupted coexistence, this judge understands that the almost five years of accredited coexistence, plus the detective's report that proves that they were a couple since 2013, and above all, the celebration of the wedding, with a banquet and honeymoon trip, must be considered that we are in an exceptional situation," argues the ruling.

As has been proven, on June 19, 2018 Manuela and José began the marriage file before the justice of the peace in Almussafes. Thus, the couple set a date for the wedding celebration and hired a honeymoon trip to Kenya and Tanzania. When the expected day arrived, the birth certificate of the husband, a native of Germany, did not arrive on time. That was not an impediment to go ahead and celebrate the banquet with the guests after a ceremony without legal validity and later enjoy the honeymoon.

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— SnewJ Sun May 29 07:50:40 +0000 2016

José's death on June 20, 2020, in the middle of the pandemic but for reasons unrelated to the coronavirus, cut short his plans to formalize his marriage and when his partner applied for the widow's pension, Social Security dismissed said request through a resolution issued in October of that same year arguing that they were not formally constituted as a common-law couple. In a subsequent claim, the INSS management also dismissed the woman's claim.

The plaintiff, represented by the lawyer Isabel Andrés, from the Monzó&Andrés law firm, has finally managed to get a social court of Valencia to recognize her right to collect the widow's pension despite not appearing as a domestic partner nor be married.

"Due to misfortunes of fate, José passed away before their union was legally formalized", clarifies the sentence, which bases its decision on the "testimony made in the trial", which without any doubt accredited the celebration of the banquet and the existence of a relationship between the plaintiff and the deceased, witnesses to whom it grants "full veracity, since their account is consistent and coincides with the data that appears in the documentary evidence provided by the parties."

In addition, the judge indicates that "there is no element that suggests that there is an intention to artificially generate a right to a widow's pension", and taking into consideration the celebration of the banquet and the honeymoon trip, together with the almost five years of cohabitation accredited by proof of registration, "it must be considered that there was a common-law couple for the purposes of granting the right to the widow's pension." Her safari to Kenya has finally served as evidence for the widow to be able to collect the benefit with a regulatory base of 1,210 euros.