Homosexual partner deserves full widow's pension, court rules

The Haifa Labor Court recently decided to recognize a woman whose female life partner had died as a widow, and therefore ordered her insurance company, Mivtahim Pension Funds, to pay the petitioner a full widow's pension.

The petitioner's partner, Or Lefler, died in 2004. She was survived by a daughter that she and her partner had adopted. The petitioner then requested that the court recognize the girl as an as an orphan and herself as a widow.

Mivtahim, however, was prepared to pay the petitioner only half the normal widow's pension, arguing that she should be entitled only to the rights granted widowers, who receive pensions that are 50 percent less than those of widows.

Attorney Dori Spivak of the Human Rights Program at Tel Aviv University, representing the petitioner, argued in the petition that surviving partners should be classified according to their gender, not the gender of the deceased.


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