A couple who have lived together for ten years, with two children, but without marrying, are not a family as far as the AHV/AVS is concerned. If one of them dies, the children receive a pension. The surviving partner does not.
This is the least understood point of a system that otherwise genuinely protects survivors. It is worth looking at what each tier pays, and to whom, before deciding whether anything is missing.
The AHV/AVS: three pensions and one shared condition
The first pillar provides three survivors' pensions: the widow's pension, the widower's pension and the orphan's pension. All of them require the deceased to have paid contributions for at least one full year, or an equivalent condition to be met, such as child-raising credits.
The amount depends on the deceased's contribution record, not on a flat rate. But the proportion is fixed. On the official scale of full pensions, the widow's or widower's pension is 80% of the old-age pension the deceased would have received, and the orphan's pension 40%. When both parents have died, the child receives one pension per parent, within a limit set by law.
Widows
A married woman is entitled to a widow's pension if she has one or more children at the time of death, whatever their age, or if she is at least 45 and was married for at least five years. Children of the deceased spouse who live with her count as her own.
Widowers, and what the European Court changed
A married man is entitled to a widower's pension if he has one or more children when he is widowed. For a long time this pension ended when the youngest child turned 18, whereas the widow's pension continued. On 11 October 2022 the European Court of Human Rights ruled that this difference was discriminatory.
Since that date a transitional arrangement has applied: the pension of widowers with children no longer stops when the youngest child turns 18. It covers only widowers with children; a widower without children is still not entitled to a pension. The Federal Supreme Court extended the same reasoning to divorced widowers with children in a ruling of 16 December 2024, without retroactive effect.
Children
A child whose father or mother dies is entitled to an orphan's pension until the age of 18. If the child is in education or training, entitlement lasts until it ends, but no later than age 25. In 2026, a child in education or training whose gross annual income exceeds CHF 30'240 is not entitled to it.
The second pillar: broader, but depending on the fund
Occupational pension schemes (BVG/LPP) also pay survivors' benefits, on top of AHV/AVS benefits. The law grants a pension to the surviving spouse who has at least one dependent child, or who is at least 45 and whose marriage lasted at least five years; according to the Federal Social Insurance Office (FSIO), it amounts to 60% of the deceased's full old-age or invalidity pension. A spouse who meets neither condition receives a one-off lump sum equal to three years' pension. A surviving registered partner is treated as a spouse. Orphans receive 20% until 18, or until 25 if they are in education or training.
This is where the unmarried partner has a way in again, if a narrow one. Article 20a of the BVG/LPP allows a pension fund to provide in its regulations for a benefit for a person who lived with the deceased in an uninterrupted partnership of at least five years immediately before the death, or who must support children they had together. But the law allows it; it does not require it. It is the fund's regulations that decide whether there is a benefit, on what conditions, and how much.
Those conditions can be matters of form as much as of substance. It is better to read them while there is still time to meet them.
If the death is caused by an accident
For an employee, an accidental death also opens entitlement to accident insurance (UVG/LAA) pensions, with their own rates and their own ceiling. They are described in the guide to workplace accidents, and they are coordinated with the AHV and the second pillar rather than being added on without limit.
What gap remains, and how to fill it
State and occupational pensions do not replace a whole income, and they do not pay off a mortgage. For an unmarried couple, the partner's protection may be zero in the first pillar and uncertain in the second. That is the gap covered by death cover (risk life insurance), taken out privately, in pillar 3a or 3b.
- Check your pension fund's regulations to see whether a benefit is provided for an unmarried partner, and on what conditions.
- Ask the fund whether it requires the partnership to be notified in writing during your lifetime, and do so if it does.
- Check the order of beneficiaries for your pillar 3a: it is set by law, and the partner does not come first.
- Work out what the household would be short of, rent or mortgage included, before choosing a death benefit amount.