Collect pension from years in Italy?

Question

My husband worked in Italy for almost 8 years, as a legal resident. He payed into their pension system all that time. Two years ago, he moved to the United States for our marriage. My question is: is he still eligible to collect the money he payed? He also payed into a societa of his restaurant. How would he collect this money back, if possible? Anyone have experience with this? Thanks.

Answer 1

Yes, it should be. Actually, it seems it's almost impossible getting rid of a pension: I heard stories about people that for different reasons thought a pension was not needed so they asked not to receive the money (for instance she want to give up the pension a reversionary pension because her own pension is good enough) but they didn't managed, no way!

Anyway, here's what I found:

"Per chi rimpatria

Lo straniero che ha iniziato a lavorare prima del 1996, se torna nel suo Paese, può ottenere la pensione di vecchiaia (calcolata con il sistema retributivo o misto) solo al compimento dei 65 anni (anche per le donne) e se ha almeno 20 anni di contributi versati. Chi invece è stato assunto dopo il ´95, a 65 anni otterrà comunque la pensione (anche se ha meno di 5 anni di contributi).

La pensione"di reversibilità" spetta ai familiari solo se lo straniero che è rimpatriato muore dopo aver compiuto i 65 anni."

I suppose your husband do speak Italian, anyway it says (for a foreigner who went back to his/her Country) if he started working in Italy before 1996, he have to 65 in order and 20 years of contributions paid, in order to receive the pension.

But if he's been employed after 1995, at 65 he can receive the pension even with less than 5 year of contibutions.

There are bilateral agreement with a number of nations, including the USA, for determining how to sum up contributions.

A more complete explanation is here: http://www.ital-uil.it/migranti/previden...

As for your second question, could you be more specific? He owned a share of a company (in fact, the restaurant)? Which kind of company (S.p.A., S.r.l., a "cooperativa", etc)?

Edit:

INPS http://www.inps.it/home/default.asp

is national institute for welfare services.

S.r.l. (società a responsabilità limitata) means Limited (Ltd).

A cooperativa, instead... well, the English term is almost identical, cooperative; the workers in fact are also the owners, different rules are generally applied  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative

For further details, apart from getting in touch with INPS itself,  http://www.inps.it/home/default.asp?iIDL... (they provide info in seven languages)

I also suggest you to ask ADUC (one of the main consumer's associations) http://aduc.it/dyn/

More specifically here: http://aduc.it/dyn/sosonline/richiesta/ (the note is a warn not to write in a way that could be taken as defamatory :) click on the bottom ("Ho letto queste avvertenze e voglio scrivervi") and give all the details (if you can do in Italian, better, but I'm sure English is not a problem); provide an e-mail address, you will get a qualified answer in few days.

I suggest ADUC because I know how reliable they are.

Answer 2

I think yes. I suggest contact Italy Consulate.*