Dividing Old-Age Pension for Divorced Couples... Court Rules "Periods of Separation and Running Away Must Be Excluded"

The court ruled that periods during which the couple was not in a substantive marital relationship due to reasons such as separation or running away should be excluded when calculating the amount of old-age pension to be shared with a divorced former spouse.

According to the legal community on the 8th, the Administrative Division 4 of the Seoul Administrative Court (Chief Judge Kim Jeong-jung) ruled in favor of Plaintiff A in a lawsuit against the National Pension Service (NPS) seeking cancellation of the pension amount change order related to the division of pension payments. A and B married in March 1992 and divorced by mutual consent in November 2013. A began receiving old-age pension monthly from August 2022, but B requested pension division from the NPS in January last year. The NPS informed A that the old-age pension amount would be divided monthly and that the unpaid divided pension amounts from 2022 to 2023 would be reclaimed. The NPS calculated the marriage period as a total of 176 months and set the divided pension amount at approximately 188,000 KRW per month.

A opposed this and filed an administrative lawsuit against the NPS. A argued that B ran away about three years after marriage and moved residence from 1998, so this period should be excluded from the marriage period used to calculate the pension division.

The court sided with A. The judgment stated, "It is reasonable to consider that a substantive marital relationship did not exist after the point of separation, given that there is little evidence of financial transactions between B and A in A’s account and that the two appear to have had no contact since their separation."

The court concluded, "The NPS’s decision, which assumed a substantive marital relationship throughout the legal marriage period, violates the National Pension Act. Based on the submitted materials, a proper divided pension amount cannot be calculated, so the entire order is canceled." Article 64, Paragraph 1 of the National Pension Act stipulates that periods during which a substantive marital relationship does not exist due to reasons such as separation or running away shall be excluded from the marriage period.