Can Different Pens or Handwriting in an Employment Record Book Affect Your Pension?
Entries made with a different pen in an employment record book — can this be grounds for refusing to count a period of employment towards the insurance record?
For many people, a pension becomes one of their main sources of income after retirement. Ukrainian legislation establishes the conditions for obtaining a pension, including the required retirement age and insurance record, as well as the documents that must be submitted to the Pension Fund.
Among the documents used to confirm periods of employment, particular attention should be paid to the employment record book, which has historically been one of the primary documents confirming a person’s employment history.
The rules governing employment record books establish requirements for completing entries concerning employment. Such entries should contain the necessary information about the employer, the employee’s position, the grounds for hiring and dismissal, and other relevant information. Corrections, erasures, inaccurate entries or other formal deficiencies may raise questions when the Pension Fund examines documents submitted for pension purposes.
Unfortunately, many people discover errors or deficiencies in their employment record books only when applying for a pension. However, defects in an employment record book do not automatically mean that the relevant period of employment must be excluded from the insurance record.
Where the employment record book does not contain sufficient information or certain entries require clarification, periods of employment may be confirmed by other documents provided for by law.
Depending on the circumstances, these may include certificates issued by employers, educational institutions, military or other public authorities, archival institutions, payroll documents, extracts from orders and other records confirming that the person actually worked during the disputed period.
Where the relevant documents have not survived for reasons beyond the applicant’s control, Ukrainian legislation has also historically provided, in certain circumstances, mechanisms for confirming employment periods on the basis of witness testimony.
But what happens if the Pension Fund questions an employment record simply because it was made using a different pen, different ink or different handwriting?
Such disputes have repeatedly arisen in Ukrainian court practice. Pension authorities have sometimes refused to count periods of employment because individual parts of an entry were written using different ink or because the handwriting appeared to differ.
However, such visual differences do not, by themselves, establish that the entry is false or that the person did not actually work during the relevant period.
The Instruction governing the maintenance of employment record books established requirements concerning how entries were to be made, including the persons authorised to make them, their sequence and the information that had to be recorded.
In particular, entries were required to be made carefully using a fountain or ballpoint pen with black, blue or violet ink.
Court practice has established that the mere use of different permissible inks does not constitute sufficient grounds for excluding a period of employment from a person’s record, particularly where the entries are chronologically consistent and contain no indications of erasure, falsification or alteration of their substantive meaning.
When assessing entries made with different inks, courts therefore focus primarily on whether the differences alter the substance of the entry, distort its meaning or provide genuine evidence of falsification.
Moreover, the applicable Instruction did not prohibit different entries from being made using different pens, provided that the permitted ink colours were used.
An important legal position on this issue was expressed by the Supreme Court in its judgment of 15 July 2020 in Case No. 127/13762/17.
In that case, the Pension Fund refused to count a period of employment after concluding that entries in the claimant’s employment record book had been made using different handwriting and different types of ink.
The Supreme Court rejected this approach.
The Court noted that officials of the pension authority are not handwriting experts and therefore cannot professionally determine whether handwriting is identical, how particular entries were made or which writing instruments were used to make them.
Such conclusions require specialised knowledge and cannot be based merely on the subjective visual assessment of Pension Fund officials.
The Court also took into account that the Pension Fund had not requested the appointment of a handwriting examination to establish whether the disputed entries had actually been falsified or altered.
Therefore, different handwriting, a different pen or different permissible ink in an employment record book does not, by itself, prove that the document is invalid or that the relevant period of employment should be excluded from the insurance record.
Another important principle in such disputes is that an employee is generally not responsible for the proper maintenance of employment documentation by the employer. Formal deficiencies attributable to an employer or its authorised officials should not automatically result in the loss of the employee’s pension rights.
If the Pension Fund refuses to recognise a period of employment solely because entries in the employment record book were made using different pens, ink or handwriting, the reasons for the refusal should be carefully examined. Where there is no genuine evidence of falsification and the relevant employment can be confirmed by the employment record book or other evidence, the Pension Fund’s refusal may be challenged before an administrative court.
