A very vast area was affected by the recent Great East Japan Earthquake; particularly there was enormous damage to human life such as people dead or missing due to the tsunami. It is likely that many policyholders under the Small Enterprise Mutual Relief System were hit by the earthquake or tsunami.

Under this mutual relief system, upon the death of a policyholder, mutual relief money will be paid to the “bereaved family policyholders” as specified in Article 10 of the Small Enterprise Mutual Relief Law. Such payment will enable the bereaved family to reconstruct the damaged business or to cover daily living expenses. It may happen, however, that in the case a mutual relief policyholder is “missing,” mutual relief money will not be paid to the bereaved family until such a missing policyholder is “declared missing” (“adjudication of disappearance”) and the policyholder’s “constructive death” (i.e., the policyholder is deemed dead) becomes determined under the Civil Code.

Reference 1:  

(i)  The bereaved family cannot file a petition with the family court to have a missing policyholder declared “missing” under Article 30 of the Civil Code until one year elapses since the pertinent disaster ceases to exist.

(ii) The family court with which such a petition is filed may declare the adjudication of disappearance on the missing policyholder upon the expiration of a two-months-or-longer public notification following an investigation of the alleged fact.

In the case where a mutual relief policyholder has been caused to be missing due to the earthquake and a petition is filed by any of the bereaved family policyholders who shall be entitled to the payment of mutual relief money (i.e., spouse, children and parents that are specified in Article 10 of the Small Enterprise Mutual Relief Law) once the policyholder’s constructive death has become determined, an amount equivalent to a certain percentage of the total contributions paid by the policyholder (70% to 90%) will be provisionally provided to the petitioners, thereby supporting financing to those who had been dependent upon the disaster-hit missing policyholder for a livelihood, without waiting for the “constructive death” procedures or without terminating the relevant mutual relief contract regarding which the will of the missing policyholder is unknown.

Reference 2: Article 10 of the Small Enterprise Mutual Relief Law (abstracts)

Article 10 (Scope of the Bereaved Family and Order of Precedence)

1. The bereaved family policyholders who shall be entitled to the payment of mutual relief money set forth in Article 9, Paragraph 1 shall be as follows:

   • (1)  Spouse (including a person who, although not notified to the competent municipality as the spouse, had a de facto marital relationship with the missing policyholder at the time of his/her death);
   • (2)  Children, parents, grandchildren, grandparents and brothers and sisters who depended principally upon the policyholder’s income at the time of his/her death for a living;
   • (3)  In addition to those stated in (1) and (2) above, relatives who depended principally upon the policyholder’s income at the time of his/her death;
   • (4)  Of children, parents, grandchildren, grandparents, brothers and sisters, those who do not fall under (2).
2. The order of precedence applied to the payment of mutual relief money shall be as stated in (1) through (4) above. The order of precedence applied to those entitled under (2) or (4) shall be the order stated therein, which, relating to parents, shall be adoptive parents and biological parents and relating to grandparents, shall be adoptive parents of adoptive parents, biological parents of adoptive parents, adoptive parents of biological parents and biological parents of biological parents.
3. In case under the provision of the foregoing paragraph there are two or more bereaved family policyholders in the same order that are entitled to the payment of mutual relief money, then the pertinent amount of mutual relief money shall be divided in equal parts by the number of such eligible policyholders, each of whom shall be provided with one of such parts.

• Outline of Small Enterprise Mutual Relief System (PDF:76KB)
• Disaster recovery measures taken so far under the Small Enterprise Mutual Relief System (PDF:65KB)

May 13, 2011

Office for Business Stability, Business Environment Department, Small and Medium Enterprise Agency

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