Mid America Pension Project Rescues Surviving Spouse’s Benefit

Mid America Pension Project Rescues Surviving Spouse’s Benefit

A recent success story from the Mid-America Pension Project shows why it often pays for people who can’t get the pension benefits they are owed to ask the Pension Counseling Projects to take on their fight.

The Mid America Pension Project is one of six counseling projects supported by the Administration on Community Living that provide free critical assistance to people with retirement benefit problems in 31 states. The attorneys at Mid America work to protect and promote the retirement security of workers, retirees and their families in Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana and Pennsylvania.

In this case, Paul P. worked as a press operator for an auto parts manufacturer in Ohio for 32 years until retiring with a monthly pension in 1998 at age 65. In 2023, he died at age 90, leaving behind Shirley, his spouse of nearly 68 years. When Shirley later informed Paul’s pension plan of his death, the plan, to her disappointment and surprise, told her that she wasn’t entitled to a survivor’s benefit.

Under federal pension law (legislation named the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, also known as ERISA), surviving spouses, like Shirley, would automatically receive a survivor’s benefit unless they signed a notarized document waving their right to that benefit.

Although Shirley would normally have qualified for a survivor’s benefit because she was Paul’s spouse both on his retirement and his date of death, the plan told her that this wasn’t the case because Paul had been receiving his unreduced pension payments and that she had waived her right to a survivor’s benefit when Paul elected to take his full benefit.

Shirley, however, knew that Paul wanted to provide for her and never would have taken his full benefit if it meant that she would be left without any benefit payments if he died before she did. She also knew that she had never waived her survivor’s benefit.

So, Shirley wasn’t about to give up; she was determined to fight to get her benefit. With help from her daughter, Shirley contacted the Mid America Pension Project for assistance.

The pension counseling project attorney assigned to the case, Rose Scollard, requested Paul’s complete retirement file from the pension plan to confirm that Shirley had been provided notice and had signed a waiver of her survivor’s benefit. In response, the plan admitted that it didn’t have any documentation of Paul’s retirement file.

As the plan couldn’t show that Shirley had consented to a waiver of her survivor’s benefit, Rose submitted a claim for benefits requesting that the plan give Shirley, age 91, a survivor’s benefit calculated from the date Paul died in 2023. Rose also informed the plan that it was violating ERISA by failing to pay Shirley her benefits.

Four months later, the plan granted Shirley’s claim, conceding that it had mistakenly denied her benefit. She began receiving a monthly lifetime benefit of about $441 with the plan also sending her a lump sum payment of $6,172, representing her retroactive benefit payments owed from 2023 to the present.

Shirley told Rose how happy she was to get her benefit, saying that she “really appreciated [Rose’s] tough work” on her behalf and that Shirley now felt “at peace,” since she didn’t “need to fight this anymore.” In addition, Shirley said she was grateful to get her benefits since it satisfied her late husband’s wish to “make sure that I would be Ok financially when he passed.”

Since its inception in 1993, the Pension Counseling and Information Program has recovered over $320 million in retirement benefits and assisted more than 72,000 individuals. The Mid America project alone has recovered nearly $85 million for its clients. The Pension Rights Center is the resource center to the projects, providing legal and programmatic support.

This publication was supported by the Administration for Community Living (ACL), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as part of a financial assistance award totaling $415,000 funded by ACL/HHS and $158,334 funded by non-government source(s). The contents are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official views of, nor an endorsement, by ACL/HHS, or the U.S. Government.