Survivor’s pension: why you should not miss this approach at Agirc-Arrco

Every year, widows and widowers can lose several hundred euros. For what ? Because they forget to ask for their survivor’s pension in certain pension plans. Here are some tips.

Capital Video: Survivor’s pension: be careful not to forget this approach at Agirc-Arrco

This is an oversight that can sometimes cost you dearly. When your spouse dies, you can receive part of their pension if you were married. This is what we call the survivor’s pension. But be careful, depending on the retirement plan to which you are attached, the conditions for receiving it are not the same. Thus, in the general scheme, you receive a survivor’s pension equal to 54% of the pension received by your deceased spouse. To do this, your resources must not exceed a certain amount which, in 2024, is set at 24,232 euros per year for a person living alone.

If your income is higher than this ceiling, you will not be entitled to receive a survivor’s pension for the basic plan. This refusal does not, however, prevent you from applying for a survivor’s pension from other pension plans. This advice appears in the report for 2023 from the mediator of Agirc-Arrco, the supplementary pension scheme for private sector employees.

A gain of sometimes several hundred euros

In fact, to receive a survivor’s pension from Agirc-Arrco, there is no no resource requirements. So if you have been rejected by Retirement Insurance, nothing prevents you from making the same request to this supplementary plan. In his report, the mediator states that this difference must be clearly stated, which “would help to avoid loss of survivor’s rights for people who sometimes do not go beyond their procedures with the deceased’s basic scheme if they are not eligible to receive a survivor’s pension”.

This small dose of pedagogy is far from trivial. In 2021, according to a note from the Retirement Orientation Council (Cor) dated October 19, 2023, nearly 3 million widows or widowers received a survivor’s pension from Agirc-Arrco. A figure which could therefore be higher if all the people concerned, despite a refusal from Retirement Insurance, began the process of receiving a survivor’s pension from Agirc-Arrco. A procedure which is more and more simple with the online reversion request on the retirement info site which allows you, in one go, to complete the process for all retirement plans and can thus save you from missing out on several hundred euros. Indeed, still according to Cor figures, beneficiaries of a survivor’s pension receive on average 329 euros per month for women and 163 euros for men.

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