No more benefits for deadbeats: Estranged parents won't receive dead child's pension funds

New revision clarifies that parents who abandoned their children aren’t entitled receive any benefit from the child’s death.

A stock image of a funeral (123rf)

Parents who disregarded child-rearing obligations will not be eligible to receive their dead child's survivor pensions, according to the law revision that recently passed in the National Assembly.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare and the National Pension Service said the related revision will be effective starting Jan. 1, 2026. It will be applied to parents judged by the courts to have lost their rights of inheritance to the child's assets under the Civic Act on disqualification of the inheritor.

Under section 4 of the National Pension Act, a portion of a pension subscriber's due benefits are transferred to the bereaved family. It is applicable to annuitants of an old-age pension, who have subscribed to the National Pension Plan for at least 10 years, along with meeting other conditions.

Parents deemed unsuitable for inheritance will not be eligible for the monthly pension, or any form of upfront payment related to the survivor pension program, showing that the parents who did not fulfill their duties to their children will not be permitted to reap benefits from the children's death.

'Goo Hara law' and moves to penalize irresponsible parents

The recent revision is part of legal revisions to ban parents benefiting from the death of a child they abandoned.

One of the major catalysts for such movement was the death of late Goo Hara, a K-pop star who died in Novembe 2019. After Goo's death, her long-estranged mother showed up to claim her wealth, estimated to be around 15 billion won ($10.2 million). The civic court awarded her 40 percent of her assets.

The aforementioned Article 1004-2 at the time outlawed the deceased's lineal ascendant from inheritance only in case of murder, attempted murder, and interfering with the deceased's will via fraud or duress. Theoretically, a child-abuser was still entitled to inherit their victim’s assets.

Despite Goo's brother testifying that their mother did not even contact them for 20 years, the civic court had no choice but to acknowledge her rights as a primary inheritor.

After the state-wide petition touched off by Goo's brother and multiple obstacles along the way, the Constitutional Court in April, 2024 acknowledged that this particular clause was unconstitutional. In August that year, the National Assembly revised the law to strip a parent's right to inherit their children's asset if they had committed serious crimes against the child or grossly neglected child-rearing duties.

Other cases had also sparked nationwide furor.

A woman whose teenage son died in the 2014 deadly sinking of ferry Sewol, had not been aware of the son's death until the government committee for victim's compensation contacted her in 2021. After a legal dispute about the statute of limitations on rights to seek compensation, she was awarded 370 million won in compensation for the death of her son, even though she had not even known about it for seven years.

In 2020, a 55-year-old woman who abandoned her daughter at the age of 1 turned up 28 years later when she died of cancer, becoming the sole inheritor to the deceased's 150 million won in assets. The father had already passed way at the time. She even filed a lawsuit for the 50 million won her daughter's stepfamily had spent on the daughter’s behalf, eventually settling the case out of court.