Pension of an IDP from Crimea: the court ordered it restored and, after the client’s death, paid to his sister

The client’s problem

The client, an elderly pensioner, had received an old-age pension in Kerch since 1997; after the occupation of Crimea in 2014, the payments stopped. In August 2021 he moved to Kharkiv Oblast, registered as an internally displaced person and, on 1 October 2021, applied for his pension to be restored. The Pension Fund did not restore it: his pension file had not arrived from Crimea, and, according to the fund, it could only be requested after martial law ends.

What we did

• We sent attorney’s requests to the Pension Fund of Ukraine and its Main Department in Kharkiv Oblast.
• We filed a claim with the Kharkiv District Administrative Court to have the fund’s inaction declared unlawful and to oblige it to restore the pension from 1 October 2021.
• The client died on 23 June 2023. The fund accrued the pension only for October 2021 and refused to pay the rest to the client’s sister, who had lived with him, because the judgment became final after the pensioner’s death. We challenged this refusal in court on behalf of the sister.

Outcome

By a judgment of 23 January 2023, the Kharkiv District Administrative Court declared the fund’s inaction unlawful and ordered it to restore the pension from 1 October 2021: the absence of a pension file from the temporarily occupied territory is not a ground for refusal. On 28 June 2023, the Second Administrative Court of Appeal upheld the judgment.

By a judgment of 21 May 2024, the same court cancelled the fund’s refusal and ordered it to calculate and pay the unpaid pension to the sister: the client was entitled to the pension from 1 October 2021 until the day of his death, regardless of when the judgment became final. On 12 September 2024, the Second Administrative Court of Appeal upheld this judgment. The Pension Fund has paid the unpaid pension to the sister.