You can expect your employer and your pension fund to take your ill-health seriously, and you can expect fair treatment if you have to take early retirement for mental health reasons
This is thanks to a breakthrough decision regarding health benefits reached this week by John Murphy, the pension funds adjudicator.
In the first pension case heard since taking up his appointment this year, Murphy has ruled in favour of a fund member, against the fund's trustees.
The member, referred to as S G, had applied for early retirement on the grounds of suffering from depression. His application was rejected by the Cape Town Municipal Pension Fund. The result was a loss of 17,4 percent in benefits that S G would otherwise have received. It amounted to his lump sum being reduced by about R22 000 and a loss of more than R500 in his monthly pension.
Murphy says the fact that S G was depressed to the extent that he was on sick leave for almost eight months prior to his application for retirement, was a highly relevant consideration, to which the fund had attached little significance.
S G consistently maintained that he was suffering from ill-health of the mind, and for the trustees not to have investigated the true reason for S G's retirement was "a dereliction of duty".
For them to have come to the conclusion that S G was not ill, without constituting a medical board to investigate it, "is unreasonable and an abuse of their discretion", says Murphy.
He has ordered a medical board be set up to investigate S G's mental health prior to retiring. On the board's report-back, Murphy will decide whether S G is entitled to ill-health benefits.