Survivors' Pensions for Career Service and Civil Service Personnel and Their Retirees (Legislative Amendments) Bill

What does the bill do?

The law makes several amendments regarding survivors' eligibility for a pension under a budgetary pension arrangement under the Permanent Service in the Israel Defense Forces (Pensions) Law and the State Service (Pensions) Law: A. The law cancels the provision that ended the eligibility of widowers and widows or former spouses for a survivors' pension because of their remarriage. B. The law cancels restrictions that applied in cases in which, as a result of the death, the survivors were entitled both to the survivors' pension under the said budgetary pension and to compensation under the rehabilitation laws, among them the Families of Soldiers Killed in Action (Compensation and Rehabilitation) Law or the Benefits for Victims of Hostile Acts Law (including restrictions on receiving a pension and compensation together, a ceiling on the total of the compensation and the pension, and a restriction on eligibility for a survivors' pension for a spouse who has no child with them and has not yet reached the age of 35). This will allow survivors of fallen soldiers of Israel's wars and of those who died from a hostile act, who during their lifetime served in permanent service or worked in the civil service or were retirees from such service, to receive both the survivors' pension and the compensation from the Ministry of Defense or from the National Insurance Institute. C. The law increases the total amount of the pension of all survivors (the maximum rate or the extreme rate) so that it will equal the full determining salary of the active employee or the full pension paid to the retiree. The provisions of the law also apply to survivors of those who died before the law took effect (18.1.2026) with regard to payments from now on. If, on dates close to the law's entry into force, a grant is paid due to remarriage or due to being younger than 35 – an adjustment will apply to the date payments begin and to the completion of the amounts for calculating the grant. A transitional provision was also set allowing those who did not apply for a survivors' pension because of the restrictions that applied to apply now despite the limitation period. The amendments will also apply to survivors of reservists entitled to payments under the Payment of Allowances to Reservists and Their Family Members Law, 5762-2002.