No Benefits for Short Marriages

April 26, 2005

After the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) denied Adriena Sarvasova her claim for a survivor annuity because she had not been married to her husband long enough, she appealed the decision, but lost. Federal statute requires being married for a minimum of nine months to receive a survivor’s annuity.

Orion H. Pettengill retired from the federal service in 1993 with the right to an immediate lifetime annuity under the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS).

On December 10, 2002, he and Sarvasova married. In a letter to OPM that Pettengill mailed nine days after the wedding, he said he wished to provide Sarvasova with a survivor annuity. He died from cardiopulmonary arrest the next day.

After Pettengill’s death, Sarvasova filed a claim with OPM for survivor annuity benefits under the CSRS. Her claim was denied because she did not satisfy one of the conditions required by law—specifically she was married to Pettengill for less than nine months prior to his death.

Sarvasova argued that applying the law in her case was unfair because it would leave her in “dire financial straits.” A Merit Systems Protection Board judge said that argument was without merit.

Sarvasova appealed to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

She sought to strike the nine-month condition of marriage, saying it violated her constitutional rights guaranteed under the Fifth Amendment.

Sarvasova argued that it is arbitrary and without a rational basis to exclude “those widows who have less than a nine-month marriage where there are no other competing spouses, divorced wives or mothers.”

To win her case, Sarvasova had to demonstrate that the nine-month classification in the statute has no rational basis, but the court found she did not do so.

The court said, while the nine-month classification in practice results in some inequality, the legislative history shows that Congress’ decision to enact a length of marriage requirement for annuity eligibility stemmed from efforts to protect the CSRS “against so-called deathbed marriages.”

The court upheld OPM’s decision to deny Sarvasova the survivor annuity. The case was Sarvasova v. OPM, Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 04-3314, 3/23/05.