Woman who married her father-in-law to inherit army pension has conviction upheld by STM

A woman and her ex-partner had their conviction for fraud against the Brazilian Army pension system upheld by the Superior Military Court (STM). In 2011, the defendant married an 89-year-old former combatant of the Expeditionary Force in Recife.

The former combatant, however, was the father-in-law of the defendant, who was 40 years younger than him at the time. He had Alzheimer’s and died a few months after the wedding, in December 2012. The two never had an effective marital relationship, and the defendant filed the application for pension entitlement on January 10, 2013.

According to the STM, as soon as her then-husband passed away, the woman received the pension for almost ten years, when she was denounced by one of the ex-combatant’s granddaughters, who alleged that the accused had set up the marriage to deceive the pension system and mislead the Brazilian Army.

By October 2021, she had received more than R$435 thousand in total. The loss was more than R$919 thousand to the public coffers, translated into current values.

The defendants lived with the elderly man, and it is not possible to determine whether he was aware of the plan devised by the couple and whether he agreed with his participation, or whether it was all a mistake, according to the Military Public Prosecutor’s Office.

In the Federal Military Court (JMU), the pair were prosecuted and tried in the Military Court of Recife, where the federal judge of the Military Court found that the two were guilty of the crime of fraud. They were sentenced to serve a three-year prison sentence.

The couple’s defense appealed the decision to the Superior Military Court in Brasília. During the appeal trial in May of this year, Minister Artur Vidigal de Oliveira requested to review the case in order to better analyze it, which the Court reviewed again last Tuesday (13).

In his vote, the minister voted to acquit the accused. According to Vidigal, there was a marriage in a registry office and a certificate was issued, with public trust, which could not be admitted as fraud.

The rapporteur of the case, Minister Marco Antônio de Farias, disagreed with the position, and said that even though there was an official marriage certificate, the truth of the facts showed that it was all nothing more than a huge fraud against the Army pension system.

Furthermore, Marco Antônio explained that Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of degenerative dementia in the elderly and is characterized by a slow and progressive progression that results in the destruction of essential mental functions. With this, he commented on the elderly man’s clinical condition to prove that he did not know what he was doing when he married his daughter-in-law.

The minister also stated that it was proven that the couple, the elderly man’s daughter-in-law and son lived together in the master bedroom, while the ex-combatant remained in his own bedroom.

“The defendants arranged the marriage between the defendant and the former combatant with the intention of misleading and maintaining the Military Administration in order to obtain the special pension. Intentional distortion of the truth, especially regarding the requirements for receiving the pension, with the intention of circumventing official controls and obtaining undue financial advantage, constitutes the crime of fraud. The crime of fraud, perpetrated against public institutions, in its various forms, affects the Administrative Order. In this typical case, it is impossible to dissociate, from the list of consequences, the misfortunes caused to the management of budgetary resources”, he said.

The conviction of the defendants was upheld by a majority vote.