German court orders heir to repay €53,857 in pension overpayments

A ruling by the Landessozialgericht Nordrhein-Westfalen has ordered an heir to repay €53,857.06 to the German pension insurance system following a decades-long error in benefit calculations.

The case originated from a widow who received an inflated survivor's pension starting in August 1990. Because her own old-age pension, which began in July 1992, was not factored into the calculations, she received excess payments for over 23 years. The error was only identified during an internal data comparison in 2015.

Although the pensioner passed away during the legal proceedings, the debt was transferred to her heir as a legal successor. The court upheld the retroactive recalculation, ruling that the error did not qualify for protection of legitimate expectations due to gross negligence, thereby necessitating the full repayment from the estate.