On the go: A woman has won the right to her late partner’s military pension in a Court of Appeal ruling on the rights of unmarried couples.
The Royal Air Force pension plan allows partners to inherit their partners’ pensions, but not if they are already married to someone else.
Air Commodore Christopher Green was a serving officer in the RAF when he died suddenly and unexpectedly on May 17 2011.
He had been in a committed relationship with Jane Langford for 15 years. The RAF pension scheme provides for unmarried partners of officers to receive a pension in the event of an officer’s death. Air Cdre Green had assumed that Ms Langford would be provided for in the event of his death.
However, the RAF refused to pay Ms Langford a pension because of the rule in the pension regulations that a surviving partner will be disqualified if he or she is married to another person, and Ms Langford had not formally dissolved her marriage to her ex-partner.
The Court of Appeal unanimously held that the RAF rule breached Ms Langford’s rights under the Human Rights Act 1998.
Sonia Bamford of Candey Solicitors, who represented Ms Langford, said she has “fought for 8 years now with grace and dignity”.
She said: “This ruling is a gateway to justice for both Ms Langford and many others who may have been denied pension rights following the death of beloved partners.”
Ms Bamford added: “The rule which was held to be unlawful in Ms Langford’s case is found in most public sector pension schemes including Education, Police, Fire Service, NHS and Civil Service, which have millions of members.”
She noted that anyone who has been refused a surviving partner’s pension because he or she had not divorced an ex-partner could now bring a claim, including for back payments.
While this ruling is only directly applicable to relevant public sector schemes, Jason Coates, partner at Gowling WLG, said : “As always, private sector schemes will want to consider if there is any read-across into their rules.”
Penny Cogher, partner at law firm Irwin Mitchell, looked at the wider issues: “This case again shows that the public do not differentiate in their day-to-day lives in the same way as the law over whether a couple are married, divorced, separated, legally separated, common law or something else, and what this means if one of them dies. While the law is slowly playing catch-up, it is only doing so in a very piecemeal fashion.”
Other glaring public sector pension injustices remain, said Ms Cogher: “One group of individuals [that] is very shabbily treated by UK public pension law... are the widows and widowers of people who were in receipt of a pension from, for example the Teachers’ Pension Scheme, whose widow/widower’s pension is stopped if they remarry or cohabit.”
She added: “These types of restrictions only apply to the older pensioners – those who are probably most vulnerable.”
