LIMITATIONS ON THE MAXIMUM AMOUNT OF PENSIONS FOR MILITARY SERVANTS

Quite often, military pensioners do not dare to recalculate their pensions, because they believe that after the recalculation their pension will exceed the "maximum limits", namely the size of the maximum pension and the recalculated amount of the pension will not be assigned. Instead, they will waste time, money and energy. Therefore, they usually give up their legal right to receive a pension transfer. However, not everything is so unambiguous.

Usually, people refuse to be counted for far-fetched and legally unreasonable reasons. Quite often, the pension fund argues for refusals to transfer pensions by applying Art. 43 of the Law "On pension provision for persons discharged from military service and certain other persons" which stipulates that the maximum amount of pension cannot exceed ten subsistence minimums established for persons who have lost their ability to work. Today, in accordance with the requirements of the legislation, 10 subsistence minimums for persons who have lost their ability to work is an amount equal to 20,930 hryvnias. Accordingly, military pensioners believe that having a conditional monthly pension of 15,500, after the recalculation, the amount will be 25,500, which will already exceed 10 subsistence minimums for persons who have lost their capacity for work, which will entail the refusal of recalculation.

However, this does not correspond to today's reality and current legislation. It is worth noting that the specified provision was generally recognized as unconstitutional in accordance with the decision of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine № 7-рп/2016 of December 20, 2016. According to paragraph two of the operative part of the decision of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine № 7-рп/2016 of December 20, 2016, in particular, part 7 of Article 43 of the Law of Ukraine "On pension provision of persons, On pension provision of persons discharged from military service and certain other persons" became invalid from the date of adoption of this decision by the Constitutional Court of Ukraine. So, in essence, since December 20, 2016, part 7 of Article 43 of the Law of Ukraine "On pension provision of persons, on pension provision of persons released from military service and certain other persons" has been absent.

Accordingly, such rejection of the Pension Fund is unreasonable, illegal and unconstitutional.

In turn, the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, in a decision dated October 12, 2022, made a decision in which it was noted that the maximum pension for military pensioners cannot be limited to 10 subsistence minimums. In turn, the implementation of decisions of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine on the territory of Ukraine is mandatory for everyone. This does not give the state authorities the opportunity to apply legal norms that are recognized by the Constitutional Court as unconstitutional. Accordingly, based on the above-mentioned decisions of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, such restrictions are invalid, unconstitutional and unenforceable. Therefore, fears that the recalculation of military servicemen's pensions will be useless and unrealized due to the limitation of the "maximum pension size" are groundless and unrealistic.

With the help of our company's lawyers, such restrictions will not become an obstacle in the process of recalculating pensions for military personnel. They will be challenged in court and removed in accordance with current legislation.