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Does a long-term illness count towards retirement?

Does a long-term illness count towards retirement?

Suffering from a long-term illness is most often synonymous with long sick leave. Periods without professional activity with consequences for his future retirement. Indeed, during long-term sick leave, the patient is compensated in the form of daily allowances paid by Social Security, he no longer receives his salary and therefore no longer contributes to his retirement. However, this does not mean that you lose all your rights regarding your future retirement pension. Explanations.

The consequences of a long-term illness on his basic pension

For employees and the self-employed, the basic retirement pension is calculated taking into account three elements. First, their average annual salary (average of their gross salaries having given rise to contribution to the general scheme during the 25 most advantageous years of their career, or the average of all their gross salaries for those who have worked less than 25 years ); the number of quarters they have validated (which correspond to their period of contribution to pension insurance); and the rate of pension liquidation (determines the right or not to a retirement pension at the full rate).

The quarters taken into account for the calculation of his retirement pension relate to the periods worked during his professional life, but also to the durations of work interruption such as unemployment, illness, invalidity, maternity, military service and, for employees in the private sector, accidents at work. These last trimesters are said to be "assimilated".

A period of long-term illness during a professional career therefore makes it possible to acquire "assimilated" quarters because the daily social security allowances received during this period do not allow contributions to retirement.

Thus, for the basic pension scheme, a long-term illness gives the right to the validation of one quarter for each period of 60 days remunerated in the form of daily allowances, within the limit of 4 quarters per year. These quarters are automatically reported on his career statement.

Note:the salary used to take into account these "assimilated" quarters is lower than that normally received by the employee because it does not take into account the amount of daily allowances paid during a long-term illness. In addition, as these are not periods that made it possible to contribute to his retirement, they are not counted in the best 25 years of his professional career, from a salary point of view.

In the end, a long-term illness has consequences on the amount of his future retirement pension, and even more so if it occurs at times when his salary is highest.

The consequences of a long-term illness on his supplementary pension

On the other hand, the impact of a long-term illness on his supplementary pension is not necessarily negative. The supplementary pension is in fact based on a system of points, and not of quarters, which continue to be granted even to an employee or a self-employed person on long-term illness if he meets three conditions:to have been affiliated to the pension scheme complementary Agirc-Arrco before his long-term illness; receive daily allowances; and be on sick leave for 60 consecutive days.

In the supplementary pension system, the points taken into account to calculate those acquired during a long-term illness are those of the previous year, more precisely the average of the points acquired divided by the number of days in the year.

Only restriction, in long-term illness, you cannot acquire more points than during the previous year.