Dissolving marital property regime affects pension rights

The Supreme Court’s recent ruling clarifies that dissolving a marital property regime can affect a surviving spouse’s right to a survivor pension, even when the marriage itself remains intact.

Supreme Court revises survivor pension criteria

Survivor pensions aim to provide financial support to the beneficiaries of a deceased contributor. For a spouse or permanent partner, the law normally requires proof of cohabitation for at least five years before death.

Jurisprudence has created an exception for fact-separated spouses—those who remain married but no longer live together. Under that exception, the required five-year cohabitation period may be satisfied by any five years during the marriage, not necessarily the years immediately preceding the death.

For several years, the Supreme Court interpreted the exception to mean that proving the five-year cohabitation and the continued validity of the marriage was enough, regardless of whether the marital property regime had been dissolved.

In Sentencia SL807-2026, dated July 29, 2026, the Labor Chamber explicitly reversed that view. The Court established that the fact-separated spouse claiming the pension based on prior cohabitation must also prove that the marital property regime was still in effect at the moment of death.

The case involved a woman who had lived with her husband for roughly 12 years. Although they never divorced, they dissolved and liquidated their marital property and stopped cohabiting during the final months of the husband’s life. After his death, her claim for a survivor pension was denied.

The decision rests on article 47 of Law 100 of 1993, which mandates the existence of the marital property regime for the exception to be valid. They noted that ending cohabitation and dissolving the property regime removes the economic basis that the pension is meant to protect.

Dissolving the marital property regime does not automatically strip the right to a survivor pension if the spouses continue to live together. The new requirement only affects those who are fact-separated at the time of death and have already ended the property regime.

Historically, the separation of assets was used mainly for financial organization, not as a signal of marital breakdown. This new requirement could incentivize couples who are already living apart to maintain their marital property regime to preserve the possibility of claiming the pension of survivors.