Dutch Widow in Morocco Loses 20 Years of Benefits at Retirement
A widow living in Morocco had received a Dutch benefit since January 2000. When she reached retirement age, the payments stopped and no pension took their place. She took her case to the Supreme Court but failed to prevail.
On November 1, 2020, the woman reached the statutory retirement age. Her survivor’s benefit, the ANW, then ended. She asked the Dutch Social Insurance Bank, the SVB, to grant her an old-age pension. The agency refused on November 19.
On Bladi.net : He had been receiving a Dutch benefit in Morocco since the 1980s: it all ends at retirement
Her husband had lived in the Netherlands between 1967 and 1972 and had received a Dutch pension himself since July 1979. After his death on January 28, 2000, she was granted a survivor’s benefit. The award decision, made in 2004, recognized her entitlement retroactively from January 2000.
But to qualify for the AOW, the public old-age pension, the SVB examines her own insurance periods. She had never lived or worked in the Netherlands. Nor was any supplementary insurance recorded in her file, according to the decision of the Centrale Raad van Beroep.
The remaining possibility was to claim insurance periods accrued by her husband. This is where her claim ran into another obstacle: she was his third wife, and the periods that could establish entitlement had already been assigned to his first wife.
Her first wife’s entitlements were not transferred to her
His first wife had received an AOW pension until her death. The widow living in Morocco believed she could also benefit from entitlements linked to her husband’s history. The judges rejected that possibility: the first wife’s death did not transfer her entitlements to the third wife.
The woman had also explained that she needed the pension to support her family and cover her personal expenses. This argument did not change the outcome. The Amsterdam District Court upheld the refusal in February 2024, and the appeals court upheld that decision on April 17, 2025.
On Bladi.net : He Dies in Morocco, the Netherlands Refuse to Pay His Widow
The judges also addressed the argument that she had received the benefit for twenty years: receiving ANW does not, in itself, create an entitlement to AOW. The conditions that allowed her to receive a benefit after her husband’s death were therefore not enough to qualify her for a pension.
The widow eventually appealed to the Dutch Supreme Court. On June 5, 2026, the court declared her appeal inadmissible, finding that it clearly could not succeed. The pension refusal remains in force.
