Retirement: what happens when you are on sick leave?

A career is often dotted with sick leave and it can be complicated to measure the consequences. When the time of retirement approaches, the question of their impact on the calculation of your pension, as well as the accumulation of your quarters, arises. In the event that you are on sick leave when your retirement is looming, other issues are raised such as the possibility of postponing your retirement. In this context, can you retire during a sick leave and how is your end of career going?

When calculating your retirement pension, at the time of your departure, it is your average annual salary and the number of validated quarters that are taken into account. Thus, the average annual salary is calculated on the basis of the salary received during the best twenty-five years of your professional career. Overall, sick leave of less than 60 consecutive days has no consequences on the calculation of your retirement pension. Even if your contribution period ends during this period, you will have no impact on your pension.

However, prolonged sick leave entitling you to a daily allowance can have negative consequences on the calculation of your future pension. You must therefore be careful when your sick leave takes place during the years when your income is highest. In this case, the amount of the daily allowances paid by Social Security is not included in the total of your annual base salary, which generates the calculation of your retirement pension.

During your sick leave and as part of the basic pension, your contribution continues for one quarter for each period of 60 days. You can make this contribution within the limit of 4 quarters per calendar year. However, if you have to suffer a longer downtime due to illness, the calculation method is modified.

Thus, when you experience a long stoppage of activity, it is calculated as an assimilated quarter and not a contribution quarter. In this context, periods of sick leave that last more than a year are likely to deprive you of early retirement, if you started working before the age of 20.

If you find yourself on sick leave a few weeks or months before your retirement, it is not recommended to bring forward the date of your departure. On the contrary, it is rather advisable to keep this sick leave even if your employer encourages you to retire. It is therefore not legally possible to force you to retire. On sick leave, you can maintain your standard of living and continue to accumulate rights for your retirement.

In this case, this period of time allows you to improve the rate of your retirement or, if you have already obtained the number of quarters necessary, to experience no consequences on your basic retirement. In any case, at the end of your work stoppage, you will be a winner by receiving a larger retirement pension than that provided for at the time of the initial liquidation.