A court has ruled that a man does not have to give half of his old age pension to his ex-wife, who left home three years after their marriage and divorced him eight years after they wed.
The Seoul Administrative Court's Administrative Division 3 (Presiding Judge Ho Seong-ho) on June 5 ruled to cancel the National Pension Service's decision to pay partitioning pension to a person surnamed Yun in a suit seeking to overturn the denial of a request to change the pension amount that Yun filed against the National Pension Service.
The National Pension Service allows a divorced ex-spouse of a pension recipient to receive a partitioning pension in recognition of the spouse's mental and material contributions during the marriage. It pays 50% of the portion of the old age pension that corresponds to the period of marriage from the ex-spouse's pension amount. If the period of marriage is at least five years during the time the spouse was enrolled in the national pension, the ex-spouse can receive a partitioning pension.
Yun married a person surnamed Lee in June 1992 and divorced by agreement in February 2000. In April 2024, Lee applied for a partitioning pension from Yun's old age pension, and the National Pension Service accepted the request and decided to pay. Yun enrolled in the national pension in 1989, before the marriage. The National Pension Service determined that Yun and Lee's period of marriage was 6 years and 11 months.
Yun then petitioned the National Pension Review Committee to cancel the partitioning pension payment, arguing the actual period of marriage with Lee was less than five years, but the petition was dismissed. Yun then filed an administrative lawsuit.
During the trial, Yun argued that Lee left home in 1995, three years after the marriage. Lee, on the other hand, said, "When our business ran into trouble, Yun kicked me out of the house, and I then went to Incheon, where a friend ran a hair salon, and I felt hurt that Yun did not look for me. After staying in Incheon for about six months, I went to another region to earn money." After the separation, the child was raised by Yun.
After confirming the facts, the court found that Yun and Lee lived together with their address registered in Seodaemun-gu, Seoul, and in March 1996 Seodaemun-gu administratively deleted their resident registrations for unauthorized move-out. Yun re-registered with a new address in Seodaemun-gu in June of the same year. Lee re-registered at the previous address in May of the same year and immediately moved to another place, then moved again to Incheon in April 1999.
The court determined, "Since March 1996, when their resident registrations were administratively deleted for unauthorized move-out, there has been no substantive marital relationship between Yun and Lee." It added, "Because of separation and other factors, the period during which a substantive marital relationship existed with Yun did not reach five years, so Lee did not qualify as a beneficiary of a partitioning pension."