Woman wins right to a share of dead partner’s pension
A WOMAN who was refused any part of her live-in partner’s pension after his death won her legal battle for a share yesterday.
Five Supreme Court judges said pension rules which prevented payments to Denise Brewster discriminated against cohabitees and broke human rights law.
The decision opens the way for longterm live-in partners of public sector workers to have an automatic right to survivors’ pensions – giving them the same status as widows, widowers and civil partners.
Lawyers said the ruling is a precedent that could also open the way for unmarried live-in partners to win a range of further rights that at present are confined to married people.
Only married people or civil partners enjoy legal privileges such as the right to financial support if their relationship breaks down, and freedom from tax on what they inherit from a husband or wife.
Miss Brewster, from Coleraine in Northern Ireland, had lived with transport official Lenny McMullan for ten years and they owned a home together. They got engaged on Christmas Eve in 2009 but Mr McMullan died suddenly on Boxing Day. The public sector pension scheme into which he had been paying for 15 years recognised longstanding cohabitee relationships. But it stipulated that members must submit a signed form if they wanted a cohabitee partner to benefit from their pension.
Mr McMullan’s pension managers at the Northern Ireland Local Government Officers’ Superannuation Committee had not received the necessary form.
Miss Brewster, who is in her early 40s, won a Northern Ireland High Court claim for a share of the pension, but her victory was overturned by the Appeal Court. She claimed at the Supreme Court that the requirement for cohab- itees to submit a form was discriminatory. Lord Kerr, supported by the four other justices yesterday, said the intention behind the scheme rules ‘must have been to remove the difference in treatment between a longstanding cohabitant and a married or civil partner of a scheme member’.
James Brown, of the Hall Brown Family Law firm, said: ‘Lawyers have long been pushing for Parliament and the courts to recognise what are inherently unfair outcomes for couples that have lived together. This decision could herald a sea change in the position of the law.’
Most private sector pension schemes already contain provision for benefits for cohabiting partners.