Frequently Asked Questions

Claiming your pension benefits is a multi-step process that can vary based on your employer, type of pension plan, location, and individual finances. Here is a general guide to give you an idea of what this process looks like. However, we recommend contacting your employer for the most accurate information. Additionally, this guide is meant to provide insight into single-employer pension plans, not multiemployer pension plans.

1. Contact Your Pension Plan Administrator:

If your workplace offers a pension plan, contact your HR department or the pension plan administrator. They should be able to provide information on eligibility, required documents, and the specific process for making a claim.

2. Gather Necessary Documents:

Collect any required documents such as identification, proof of age, marriage certificates (if applicable), and any other documents requested by the pension plan.

3. Fill Out the Application Form:

Obtain the pension application form from your employer or pension plan administrator. Fill it out completely and accurately, providing all the necessary information.

4. Submit the Application:

Submit the completed application form along with any required documents to the designated address or office. Some plans may allow online submission, so check for electronic options.

5. Wait for Processing:

The pension plan administrator will review your application. The processing time can vary, so it’s important to be patient. If you have questions during this period, contact your administrator for updates.

6. Receive Confirmation and Information:

Once your application is approved, you will receive confirmation of your pension benefits. This document will outline the amount you will receive, the frequency of payments, and any other relevant details.

7. Choose Payment Method:

Determine how you want to receive your pension payments. Options may include direct deposit to your bank account or receiving a check in the mail.

8. Understand Tax Implications:

Be aware of the tax implications of your pension benefits. Some pension income may be taxable, and you may need to plan for this when filing your tax returns.

9. Keep Your Contact Information Updated:

Ensure that the pension plan administrator has your current contact information. This is crucial for receiving important updates and documentation related to your pension benefits.

Remember, this process may vary, and it’s essential to follow the specific guidelines provided by your pension plan. If you have any doubts or questions, consult your employer’s HR department or contact the pension plan administrator directly for personalized assistance.

The short answer to this question is yes, you can claim unemployment benefits while receiving a pension. However, unemployment can significantly impact pension benefits, creating a complex relationship between the retirement account and the financial support system. If you receive any pension payments where a base period employer made the primary contributions, you will see a dollar-for-dollar reduction in your unemployment benefits. This is also the case even if you partially contributed to your pension, meaning you will still see the 100% dollar match in reduction on your unemployment benefits. However, in cases where you were the sole contributor to your pension plan, your unemployment benefits should not be impacted.

It is important to note that while pension benefits can impact your take-home amount from unemployment benefits, you may still qualify for unemployment benefits even if you are retired from a job and receiving pension payments if you are actively looking for a job.

This would depend on the state laws governing the life insurance policy.

Yes. Proving death is not always dependent on having the body.

Yes. Insurance companies do not make money paying claims. They make money collecting premiums. They save money by denying claims.

Often, the insurance policy will lapse due to nonpayment of premiums. Without notice of a claim, no life insurance benefit will ever be paid.

Notifying the insurance company of a death can be difficult if the policy was purchased by the deceased person. While some policies have details on how to provide notice, many older policies do not and can lead to a search for the proper contact. Having an understanding of the law and possible defenses to the claim that the insurance company may use to deny the claim is crucial, beginning with that first contact.

It depends on the language of the insurance contract. Many life insurance companies have very short windows of time after the insured’s death to provide ‘notice’ of a claim. On top of the notice of claim provisions in the policy, you would also have a separate clause in the insurance contract placing a time limit on your right to bring a lawsuit.

Yes. If you have a policy with both life and AD&D benefits or separate policies providing both, your right to those benefits is not exclusive.

Insurers are particularly bold when ERISA is involved because of all the advantages it provides, and most major insurers have developed a litigation strategy designed to be as recalcitrant and difficult as possible. When you file a lawsuit against them, they will attempt to bury your attorneys in work if you try to conduct any discovery and they will try to drag the entire process out as long as they can. Because most plaintiff’s work is not paid hourly, this is meant to make it so the case will only be profitable to the plaintiff’s lawyer if the insured client (you) take an early cut-rate settlement that gives you a fraction of what you are owed in exchange for giving up all of your rights.

Another pitfall of ERISA is how one-sided the law can be. The ERISA record limitations discussed above are bad enough, but insurers’ decisions are also typically granted deference under the arbitrary and capricious review standard. Thus, the court could rule in the insurer’s favor even if they find the insurer made the wrong decision. In other words, the judge could conclude you are disabled and still rule that you lose your case.

A judge could be required to allow the insurance company’s wrong decision to win if there is any reasonable basis the insurer can manufacture or point to. When it comes to defining what constitutes a “reasonable basis,” courts are all over the map, with some appearing to suggest that any basis is good enough. That would mean the insurance company’s in-house physician could be wrong about everything in his/her opinion, but the insurance company still wins if the claims adjuster who denied the claim “reasonably” relied upon that in-house physician’s opinion to deny your claim.

All these barriers embolden insurers to deny claims in a way they never would if state law applied, but insurance company’s act particularly badly due to ERISA’s limitation on damages. Past due benefits are all that can be sought. There are no future benefits or punitive damages or any other real skin in the game for the insurer here. It will just have to pay the claim it refused to pay and potential interest. Insurance companies have no economic incentive to pay an ERISA claim. In other words, you can go all the way through litigation, and the court will likely only order the insurer to pay you what it should have paid to begin with. Insurers understand that many people will give up without filing suit and many others cannot wait years to receive their benefits. This means insurers can get away without paying anything or can at least settle good claims for much less than what is owed. When someone actually decides to stick it out and gets a successful ruling, then the insurer will just have to pay a claim it was required to pay anyway.

ERISA is full of deadlines and those deadlines come very quickly after the first denial of your benefit. You will often find you have somewhere between 30 and 180 days to appeal your claim after it is denied.

Then, if that final denial of your appeal is issued, you must worry about something called the statute of limitations. The statute of limitations is the deadline for filing suit, and if this deadline is missed, then your case will almost certainly be dismissed very early on in the process. This deadline can be very different based upon policy language, factual circumstances, and state law. Even if you figure out how long the statute of limitations is, you also have to worry about when the clock begins to tick. Sometimes, the period begins on the date you become disabled. In other cases, it might be the date your claim is denied or the date you were required to tell the insurance company about your claim.  Determining when that clock starts and stops ticking is no easy thing to calculate because ERISA has been subjected to a lot of different interpretations and ERISA doesn’t contain its own defined clock or statute of limitation.

Courts will look to state law if a statute of limitation is not specified in the contract. If the contract provides a limitations period, things can be particularly counterintuitive because some courts have found that the limitations period begins running on the date of the claim, regardless of whether the claim was being paid or not.

Thus, an insurer could pay a claim for a year and a half, deny the claim and take six months or more to render its final appeal decision. If a two-year period is set out in the policy, the insurance company could argue you might have only months to file suit. This may sound like a lot, but it takes time to get the ERISA claim file from the insurer, the plan documents from the employer, and to decide who the proper defendants are.