Spouses of deceased pensioners were allowed to claim a higher pension

According to the PFR, citizens who have reached retirement age or are recognized as disabled can receive a survivor's pension. However, this possibility does not mean that the amount of the pension will be exactly the same as that received by the deceased spouse.

The transition to a pension of a deceased spouse can be beneficial for a widow or widower if there is a significant difference in the amount of payments. They have a significant size if the deceased spouse before retirement was a judge, a State Duma deputy, worked as an official with a good salary for many years, held a high position and had a high rank in law enforcement and some supervisory structures. For such citizens, the size of the pension can be several times higher than the average old-age pension in the country.

At the same time, the PFR clarified that the transition to a pension due to the loss of the breadwinner may not be beneficial to all recipients.

According to the PFR, the fixed payment for the pension of the deceased spouse is 50% less than for the old-age pension.

“In addition, when switching to such a pension, a person is deprived of special additional payments for northern or rural seniority. Also, his pension will not be raised when he reaches 80 years of age", - Kommersant notes.

An important condition for receiving the deceased's pension is the fact that the recipient is incapacitated for work. In order for a widower or widow to qualify for the deceased spouse's money, they will have to prove that, on the date of his death, the recipient was dependent or had lost a source of livelihood.

If a widower or widow has reached retirement age, but continues to work, they will not be provided with a survivor's pension.

If a person sees that the pension of the deceased spouse, after deducting a number of benefits, turned out to be less than his own, then he will be able to write a statement to the Pension Fund and return to the previous system of receiving his pension.

Future pensioners will be able to find out about the amount of the insurance part of old-age payments from January 1, 2022 through the portal of public services or in the Pension Fund of the Russian Federation. By order of the Ministry of Labor, the state will notify all men over 45 and women over 40 every three years about the amount of future pensions.

Now the average pension in the country is 15,744 rubles. Meanwhile, most of the survey participants note that for a comfortable life in old age, they need four times more money - about 60 thousand rubles a month.