Eligibility for survivors' benefits

You will be eligible for survivors' benefits if the deceased person contributed sufficiently to the Québec Pension Plan. Your eligibility also depends on your conjugal relationship, the relationship between the dependent children and the deceased person), or whether you paid the funeral expenses).

Did the deceased person contribute sufficiently?

The death of a worker gives entitlement to survivors' benefits if the worker contributed to the Québec Pension Plan: 

• for at least one third of the period during which he or she could have contributed and;
• at least three years.

What is the "contributory" period?

For everybody, whether or not they work, the contributory period begins in the month following the 18th birthday, or on 1 January 1966 if a person turned 18 before that date.  

The contributory period ends at the end of the first of the following months:  

• the month preceding the one in which payment of a retirement pension under the Plan begins
• the month of your 70th birthday
• the month of death