Parents who have worked or earned well during parenting will continue to receive reduced pensions for the pension. This was not unconstitutional, decided the Federal Social Court (BSG) in Kassel on Wednesday. The losing mothers are expected to call the Federal Constitutional Court.
The applicants felt that they were at a disadvantage compared to mothers who did not earn much or little during their parenting. The crediting of the child-raising periods is tax-financed and has nothing to do with the contributions. In the cases now being negotiated, this led to a loss of the pension of sometimes over 40 euros a month.
The background to this is the income threshold for pension insurance, which currently stands at a gross monthly income of € 6,150 in the East and € 6,700 in the West. The pension insurance contributions are levied at most for this amount and also the benefits are capped accordingly.
Under current law, this cap also applies when parenting periods are added. These are always considered as an average income. If this, together with the actual income, exceeds the current income threshold, child-raising periods are no longer fully effective - and in extreme cases, not at all.
In two exemplary cases, the Federal Social Court affirmed that the unequal treatment was permissible. The income threshold is "inherent in the pension system" and always act as a "performance limit". The pension cover also during the educational periods is therefore justified and constitutional.
For the first time, the BSG also denied unconstitutional unequal treatment in the course of the maternity pension. Retirees who started their retirement before July 2014 or in the case of the "Mothers' Pension 2" before the start of the year in 2019 had received a lump-sum, unsecured pension benefit. This was justified for reasons of administrative simplification and an acceleration of the disbursements, judged the Kassel judges.
Referring to pension insurance data, Dresdner pension adviser Christian Lindner estimated the number of mothers who had worked during the education period and are now retired at 850,000. Each year, 170,000 to 180,000 would be added. In 2017, it was two-thirds of pensioners in the east and 20 percent in the west.
