A pension fund refused to pay a survivors pension to a common law-spouse of a deceased woman, because the fund contended that the prenuptial agreement executed between them indicates that they intended to get married.
The Court accepted the claim for survivors pension despite the prenuptial agreement signed. The rights and obligations regarding a pension fund are determined in accordance with its regulations and in this case the pension regulations enable common-law spouses to survivors pension. The holding of the Supreme Court that denied the status of common-law marriage if a prenuptial agreement was signed dealt with a young couple who lived together for a relatively short period of time before marriage and from the fact that it was recorded in the prenuptial agreement that they intended to institutionalize their relationship, it was derived that at that stage they did not have an institutionalized relationship and therefore are not common-law married. In contrast, here we are talking about an adult couple who lived together for many years, when the prenuptial agreement even referred to the manner they lived together before the marriage and the distribution of resources. Thus, the prenuptial agreement does not indicate the absence of the status of common-law marriage, but on the contrary, and therefore the man is entitled to a survivors pension by virtue of being common-law married.