The legal aspect of an Attestation de Vita
Pensioners who have deregistered in the Netherlands and live in Thailand, for example, are familiar with the Attestation de Vita. It is written proof, which is required by pension funds, among others, to demonstrate that someone is (still) alive.
This means that after the death of someone, the pension benefit is stopped.
To be alive
A pension fund can check whether someone is “alive” on the basis of the Municipal Personal Records Database in his place of residence in the Netherlands, but this is not possible if the person has been deregistered and lives abroad. That is why a pension fund requests this Attestation de Vita every year. It is not a "watertight" system, because the person can die one day after sending this life certificate, so that the pension payment can wrongly continue for another year.
Lost in the mail
Most correspondence with a pension fund about this Attestation de Vita is done in writing and that generally works well. Yet there are enough stories of documents being lost in the mail. A pension fund takes the right to stop or freeze the payment if the Attestation de Vita is not received. Apologies are hardly accepted and you must provide an Attestation de Vita as soon as possible, after which payment will be resumed.
Two questions
It seems like a logical course of action, but is it? Following a recent incident with a pension fund, two questions come to my mind:
- As a pensioner, do I have to constantly prove that I am alive in order to receive my pension money?
of
- Does a pension fund have to prove that someone has died in order to stop the benefit?
Pension funds
In addition to the AOW, I receive a monthly pension payment from 5 other funds, each of which wants to know if I am alive. Every year I go to an SSO office in Thailand, which checks whether I am alive for the SVB, the state pension benefits agency. Three funds use the data from the SVB and therefore do not require an Attestation de Vita from me. Two other funds (I will not mention the names) do this in-house. This is indeed done in writing and I have long wondered why people in this digital age do not make use of the possibility to arrange this quickly by e-mail, for example.
What happened?
The pensions are paid into my bank account around the 22nd of the month, but the payment from one of the latter pension funds is not forthcoming in December 2018. That doesn't immediately make me nervous because a small delay of a day or so is always possible. If the payment has not yet been made by the 31st, I will send an email as a reminder.
Immediately in the new year I get a response: we have suspended the payment, because you have not (yet) sent us the Attestation de Vita. In a further explanation it says that they already sent me the papers for life certificate a few months ago, a reminder followed twice and in a letter from the beginning of December I was informed that my pension payment had been suspended. The latter letter was sent as an attachment.
I read that letter and soon I understood that all those mentioned mailings could never have been received. My full address has been known to that pension fund for years, but in this case my full address was not used: they had simply omitted the street name and house number. You understand that all those documents are somewhere in a Thai post office as "undeliverable".
Protest
I protested against this incomprehensible blunder by the pension fund in less than nice terms, and demanded that the payment be made immediately. Answer: “We have processed your complaint and you will receive an answer within 14 working days.” I then sent a scan of the now completed Attestation de Vita with the request again to quickly make the pension payment due to me. Back to official response: “We have received the Attestation de Vita, we will now check the data and if they are found to be good, payment will be resumed”
Official
In my opinion, the course of events is being handled in a purely official manner without any feeling for the position in which I have ended up unintentionally, in fact through their fault. Now I can take a (temporary) financial bump, but it could well have been that I couldn't pay the monthly bills on time.
I also think that this pension fund could have made some effort to determine whether I am indeed still alive. There is another RNI (Registration of non-residents), where my eventual death would result in a mutation and it would have been even easier to send me an e-mail asking why I do not respond to their reminder letters. The last word has not yet been said about this, I will certainly continue to argue with this pension fund in order to arrange these matters better and to pay more attention to the pensioners.
Finally
Unfortunately, I could not find the question on the internet whether this pension fund (but also the others) correctly uses the Attestation de Vita in a legal sense and therefore has the right to stop a pension payment without actual proof that a person involved has died.
Are you looking for this?
https://www.bjutijdschriften.nl/tijdschrift/tijdschrifterfrecht/2014/1/TE_1874-1681_2014_015_001_001
Hans van Mourik says
I cannot and will not judge who is wrong.
But I do it like this.
As soon as I have had my proof of life signed and signed it myself, I make a scan to my computer and place it in the appropriate folder.
Then I go to the post office and send it by registered mail.
After 4 weeks I call the relevant authority with Skype and ask whether my mail has arrived.
If so, I agree, if not, I ask if I can send a copy that I have saved (the last one has not yet occurred).
Using Skype to call fixed numbers only costs 0,10 euro cents per month.
You are also rid of that thunder.
Hans van Mourik
It does not seem unreasonable to me that a pension fund suspends payments if you give no sign of life.
Most people do not report when they have died, and then they would have to keep transferring money until they can prove that someone has died.
That is rather difficult when the person concerned has already been cremated.
The condition about stopping payments is probably stated in the pension conditions.
That seems like the first place to look for it.
You can, of course, complain about the state of affairs, and then you can probably still send your complaint to Kifid.
Furthermore, no body in the Netherlands will probably be interested in your complaint.
I should have received the forms from the SVB in December, but to date (10/1/2019) I have not received anything. I have sent an e-mail to the SVB stating that I have not yet received the forms. I still have not received a response from the SVB. What can I do?
Does this differ from the other years that you received the forms?
The mail may be delayed due to weather conditions.
The date of birth is the reference point where one can expect the forms from that date.
Sometimes it takes 6 weeks before the mail is received.
You can also receive the forms via your digid
then see your message box
Gringo,
You write,
In my opinion, the course of events is being handled in a purely official manner without any feeling for the position in which I have ended up unintentionally, in fact through their fault.
But my opinion is that you ask for understanding but have no understanding at all for the pension funds that manage our money. Think this is ignorance but we can also do some work to show that we are still alive. This not only belongs to the pension fund, but also to us. Is our joint responsibility.
As Hans van Mourik writes, there are simple solutions with a very little effort. The work you have now had to do is much more than just monitoring everything, as Hans writes. And another solution may also be to transfer the funds to 1 fund.
Show Gringo some understanding and delve into it. It's like Thailand sometimes impossible to follow.
Dear Gringo, it is clear that the pension fund has made a mistake by addressing the letter to you without street name and house number. But I also assume that you receive such a letter from this fund around the same time every year, so if that had not been the case this year, you might have raised the alarm earlier and asked where the usual letter was. It seems obvious to me that a pension fund requires that the beneficiary must prove that he/she is still alive, but whether this still has to be done with written evidence in 2019 is indeed subject to discussion. Incidentally, I read that you have now sent a scan of the Attestation de Vita, after which you received the response, I presume by e-mail, that they would resume payment after checking and approval. Would it not be possible in the future to agree with this fund that correspondence will be sent online from now on? I can understand your annoyance about what you consider to be the official attitude of the fund, but unfortunately your pension fund is not unique in this. Of course I hope that you can enjoy your pension benefits for many years to come!
I will make a copy of the completed and signed form.
The form will then be sent by registered mail.
Then I make a copy of the proof of shipment and send it by e-mail with
the notification that the form has been sent by registered mail.
Johan you can also ask with DigiD if they want to send it with DigiD.
Did 2 x, because I went to the Netherlands and asked whether earlier or postponement.
They did it for me directly via DigiD.de next day.
Don't know if they also send it, with email do it all with DigiD.
Unfortunately you have to send them by post
can also be done digitally
We also receive a Proof of Life via DigiD from SVB. We will take this to the SSO in Hua Hin to have it signed. We then send everything by e-mail to the various pension funds. Is really a piece of cake or Bath.
I read several times that someone receives or sends something via Digid. That is not true. Digid is only a secure login for government services. Once logged in you are on the website mijnoverheid.nl or the tax authorities, etc. You do not send or receive anything with digid.
I don't understand the problems.
Every year I send proof of being alive by scan to various agencies.
The next day I send the original documents by registered mail and ask after 3 weeks via my Digital number whether they have received everything.
Never had a problem in 12 years.
Jochen
I send my Attestation de Vita, completed and signed for my PMT pension, by e-mail and a few hours later I receive a receipt by e-mail.
Coincidentally, I received a message today, dated December 20, that the data sent by me has been processed through the administration. It also says in this letter that I may no longer receive a new 'Proof of Life' form stating:
If you receive an AOW benefit from the Social Insurance Bank, you must send a 'Proof of Life' to the SVB every year. We will be informed by the SVB when you have done this, in which case you will not receive a request from us for a new 'Proof of Life'.
Because I have a DigID, I send my 'Proof of Life' back digitally via My SVB (choose 'Question or message'), here too I receive a digital receipt within a few hours.
Tips for uploading documents can be found on mijnsvb.nl.
By which agency do you have this certificate signed? This used to be possible at immigration, but they no longer do that. All pension authorities accept proof of living on the AOW, but Zwitserleven does not. I don't feel like going to the embassy in Bangkok every time. I lost that Zwitserleven feeling years ago, what a bureaucracy there,
Before my PMT pension, I always went to my GP with my Attestation de Vita, who put a stamp and a signature on it free of charge and this was accepted by the PMT.
With the Attestation de Vita for my state pension, I have to go to the local Social Security Office (SSO) office, which checks the forms and also puts a stamp and signature on them for free.
Then I download the forms and send them to the relevant authority via the internet. Within a few hours I will receive the acknowledgment of receipt.
All those pension funds ask the same thing…Proof of being alive
SVB is a government agency and these papers are official. Signed SVB papers immediately sent to pension funds by E-mail and accepted, so that everything came on a date
Received a message from a pension fund that they will consult the SVB from now on.
This saves a lot of hassle.
That's right Willem, I mean with DigiD. Log in to the relevant authority.
Then you will receive it.