Senior citizens are entitled to additions to their retirement pensions on the occasion of advanced marriage anniversaries.
The payments are available at the regional level, but few people know about them. Lawyers note that the amounts can vary significantly. According to Ivan Solovyov, chairman of the Delo Zhizni legal assistance center, they are meant as a gift for a couple’s anniversary.
The amounts are established by regional laws. In St Petersburg, the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Area and Udmurtia, long-term couples are given RUR 1K ($14) for each year of marriage. So if the couple has been married for 50 years, they will be given RUR 50K ($706), writes Life.ru.
However, as Solovyov noted, officials in some regions make the benefits conditional of various criteria. One of them is that the recipients should not be officially employed. In other regions, the authorities do not pay anything at all, but send such couples minor gifts.
Oksana Krasovskaya, leading lawyer at European Legal Service, added that Moscow pensioners are also entitled to benefits on the occasion of their marriage anniversaries. These people are paid RUR 21,120 ($300) for 50 years of marriage.