WILLEMSTAD – The Court of First Instance of Curaçao has upheld a decision by the Social Insurance Bank (SVB) to reduce a woman's AOV old-age pension by 12 percent after finding that she failed to provide sufficient objective evidence that she lived in Curaçao during a six-year period for which she was considered uninsured.
The ruling provides important clarification on how residency is established when calculating AOV pension rights, particularly when someone claims to have lived in Curaçao decades ago but was not registered in the population registry.
The woman, who was born in Aruba, applied for an AOV pension on May 7, 2024.
She had been removed from Aruba's population registry effective January 1, 1983. The Aruban records stated that she had departed for the Netherlands Antilles. However, she was not officially registered in Curaçao until June 12, 1989.
The SVB initially imposed a 28 percent reduction on her pension, corresponding to 14 years it considered her uninsured.
After the woman produced an extract from Aruba's population registry showing that she had lived there until January 1, 1983, the SVB reconsidered its decision.
The number of uninsured years was reduced from 14 to six, covering the period from January 1, 1983 through June 11, 1989. Because the AOV reduction amounts to 2 percent for every uninsured year, her total reduction was lowered to 12 percent.
The adjustment had a substantial effect on her pension.
Her monthly AOV was revised retroactively from ANG 621 to ANG 759 as of December 1, 2024. Following the general increase in AOV benefits effective January 1, 2026, her monthly pension became ANG 880.
The woman nevertheless continued her case, maintaining that she had lived in Curaçao since leaving Aruba and therefore should not face any reduction.
She argued that the SVB had interpreted residency too formally by relying heavily on population registration rather than examining where her actual social and economic life was centered.
To support her position, she submitted statements from her husband, her husband's brother and a former neighbor.
The court acknowledged that registration in the population registry is not necessarily the only way someone can prove residency. The SVB itself explained during the proceedings that a person who was not formally registered could still potentially be considered a resident if objective and verifiable information demonstrated that the person actually lived in Curaçao.
That distinction could be important for other AOV cases.
However, the burden of proving residency rests primarily with the person applying for the pension, the court ruled.
In this case, the judges found that the statements from the woman's husband and his brother could not be given decisive weight without additional objective evidence. The statement from the former neighbor was also insufficient to establish that she had been a Curaçao resident throughout the entire disputed period
The court gave greater weight to the extract from Aruba's population registry.
That document established that the woman left Aruba for the Netherlands Antilles on January 1, 1983, but it did not establish that she moved specifically to Curaçao on that date.
The woman also said efforts were being made to obtain documentation showing that she had not been registered on the other islands of the former Netherlands Antilles during those years.
The court found that even the absence of registrations elsewhere would not prove that she was a Curaçao resident continuously between January 1983 and June 1989.
As a result, the court concluded that the SVB was correct in treating those six years as uninsured for Curaçao's AOV.
The appeal against the revised decision was therefore declared unfounded, leaving the 12 percent reduction in place. The judgment was issued July 10 and published August 20. An appeal can be filed with the Joint Court of Justice.
The decision could be relevant to other pensioners whose AOV records contain gaps from periods when they lived in the former Netherlands Antilles. It demonstrates that lack of registration does not automatically make it impossible to establish residency, but applicants may need objective and verifiable evidence to prove where they actually lived during the disputed years.