Widow Wins “Benefits” – but From an Unexpected Source

Widow Wins “Benefits” – but From an Unexpected Source

One of the PRC’s favorite slogans is “persistence pays off.” 

And that strategy sure paid off for 73-year-old Elaine Silverberg who—after fighting for 13 years to get the widow’s benefits she believed she was owed from her late husband’s pension plan—finally received the money.   

Just not from the pension plan. 

While her late husband’s pension plan repeatedly rejected her claim for survivor benefits, estimated to be worth about $53,000, news articles published by the New York Post about Elaine’s situation inspired two generous Post readers to write personal checks to address her loss. 

That obviously was a big surprise. Having random strangers essentially paying widow’s benefits (that should have been paid by the pension plan) is an unusual and unexpected happy ending—the sort of outcome that happens in the movies, but not often in real life (although we wrote about a stranger paying Carol Cascio’s  widow’s benefits in a different situation ten years ago).  

It shows that when legal challenges are unsuccessful, publicity can pay off. And sometimes, just like in the movies, you can depend on the “kindness of strangers,” as goes the famous line from the classic Tennessee Williams’ play, “A Streetcar Named Desire.” 

But an important question remains: why did strangers have to step in to help Elaine? Why didn’t she get her survivor benefits from the pension plan in the first place? Wasn’t she entitled to the benefits? 

The answer is both “Yes” and “No.” Like many cases concerning pension benefits, it’s complicated. Who’s right and who’s wrong may depend not only on the relevant law, but also on an interpretation of the pension plan documents —and the necessary historical trail of paperwork which may or may not exist—as well as whether the company sponsoring the plan is willing to change its terms so that the plan can then “do the right thing” when there is a particularly compelling situation. 

Elaine, indeed, had a compelling situation. Her husband Melvyn, after working for many years for Chase Manhattan Bank (now JP Morgan Chase), had earned the right to a pension. There was no disagreement about that.    

The problem was that Melvyn, who stopped working at the bank in 1979 and died at age 43 in 1988, was required by the plan to sign a paper indicating his desire to provide a survivor pension benefit to his wife. And the pension plan was legally required to notify Melvyn before his death of this requirement. But here’s where the facts differ: The plan says it notified Melvyn three times before he died. But Elaine, who kept meticulous records, says neither she nor her husband received any such notification. When the time came for the survivor benefit to begin, the plan told Elaine that she was not eligible because it had no documentation that Melvyn had elected to provide it 

Managing attorney Chris Dagg at the Mid-Atlantic Pension Project advised Elaine on her appeal of the plan’s denial of benefits. Elaine’s problem, as Chris explained, was that “[i]t was her word against the plan’s word, and no one had the paperwork to prove that the plan was at fault. Unfortunately, in these situations, the participant is in a difficult predicament, forced to prove a negative.”   

It’s important to know that it was situations like Elaine’s that helped inspire the enactment of the Retirement Equity Act (REA) signed into law by President Ronald Reagan in 1984. That law, supported by the Pension Rights Center and a coalition of women’s and retiree groups, requires that pension plans provide automatic survivor benefits to surviving spouses upon the death of the married participant—unless a spouse knowingly and voluntarily surrenders these benefits in writing before a notary or plan official. Unfortunately, because Elaine’s husband left his job before the enactment of the law she wasn’t entitled to these automatic protections. However, JP Morgan Chase, which sponsored the pension plan, could have “done the right thing” and amended the plan. But apparently the company chose not to do so.  

To her credit, Elaine didn’t give up fighting for her retirement benefits and her persistence, which resulted in a compelling news story, paid off.