An amendment to the act on pensions and retirement benefits from the Social Insurance Fund was published in the Journal of Laws on Friday. Under it, widows and widowers will be able to receive not only their retirement pension, but also part of the survivor's pension after the deceased spouse. Applications for a widow's pension will be possible from 1 January 2025.
The amendment to the act was signed by the president last Friday. Applications will be accepted from January, but the widow's pension will be paid from 1 July 2025. Initially – until 31 December 2026 – at 15%.pension benefit after the deceased spouse, and from 1 January 2027 in the amount of 25 percent. The limit for the sum of both benefits has been set at three times the minimum pensions.
Widow’s pension – for whom?
Widows and widowers who were in a marital community until the death of their spouse are entitled to a widow's pension. have reached general retirement age. Another condition is that the spouse's death did not occur earlier than five years before reaching general retirement age.
The amendment is intended to improve the economic situation of an elderly person after the death of a spouse. Currently, in the event of a conflict of rights to retirement and disability benefits, only one of them can be collected. This means that widowers can keep their retirement pension or give it up and choose a survivor's pension after the deceased.
Initially, the citizens' project assumed that widowers could keep their benefits and increase them by 50 percent of the survivor's pension after the deceased spouse or – if such a variant was more beneficial – receive the survivor's pension after the deceased spouse and 50 percent of their benefit. The authors of the citizens' project also wanted the amount of benefits received to be no higher than three times the value of the average pension in Poland.
The citizens' project was signed by over 200,000 people.
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