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Is it possible that you or someone you know
may be owed a pension benefit without knowing
it?
If you have ever changed jobs, or have been
laid off, or have retired, you may have accrued
pension assets and they may be lying in the
state's unclaimed property funds where you or
your family member worked. Pensions are not as
plentiful as they once were with all of the
IRA's, 401(k)s, and other self administered
retirement programs, but there's still plenty
of cash left from people who forgot to claim
them.
There's about $133 million in unclaimed pension
funds, according to Pension Benefit Guaranty
Corporation, the federal pension insurance
program. Who also estimates that approximately
35,000 people are affected and may have pension
money just sitting around.
The PBGC takes over pension plans if a
company goes out of business. If the employer
can't locate people that have left the company,
the PBGC tries to track them down. If you think
you may have left a pension plan somewhere, you
can check with the PBGC at search.pbgc.gov/mp/.
There, you can type in your name and company in
a search tool.
Private Pension Plans:
Many private pension plans are federally
insured even if the company terminated its plan
or filed bankruptcy, it is possible to retrieve
these unclaimed pensions. Although the Pension
Benefit Guaranty Corporation which was created
by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act
of 1974 has been successful in reuniting many
people with their pensions, many people have
not been located yet.
Former employees of certain companies, or
their survivors, may be able to claim
significant benefits as a result of a class
action legal settlement. The benefits are
payable under a 1996 settlement with the
Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC),
involving some 12,000 pension plans nationwide
that were terminated between 1976 and 1981.
If you worked for a company, for as little
as 5 years, in the past that went out of
business or ended its defined benefit pension
plan, you may still be entitled to pension
benefits. Workers in those plans who did not
receive appropriate benefits are now entitled
to them plus interest. Many thousands of
missing workers identified thus far have
received payments averaging between $10,000 and
$12,000 as a result of the settlement with
PBGC. However, thousands of employees or their
survivors have not yet been paid because they
have not been located.
Public Pension Plans:
Federal and State employees retirement plans
are generally cover under some type of public
Federal and State Employee Retirement Plans. As
with all other jobs, these employees also leave
this type of employment for many different
reasons and leave behind unclaimed pension
funds. The administrator of these plans are
charged with locating these individuals to
return their unclaimed funds. Many
government retirement plan administratore are
also trying to find lost participants to assist
them (or their beneficiaries) in claiming their
accounts.
The Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) is a
retirement savings and investment plan for
Federal employees. Congress established the TSP
in the Federal Employees' Retirement System Act
of 1986. The purpose of the TSP is to provide
retirement income. The TSP offers Federal
employees the same type of savings and tax
benefits that many private corporations offer
their employees under "401(k)" plans. TSP
regulations are published in title 5 of the
Code of Federal Regulations, Parts 1600–1690,
and are periodically supplemented and amended
in the Federal Register. (On October 30, 2000,
the Floyd D. Spence National Defense
Authorization Act was signed; it extends
participation in the TSP to members of the
uniformed services, including the Ready
Reserve.
Every state in America holds millions of
dollars worth of unclaimed pension funds that
belongs to people who don’t even know that it
exists. You may very well be among these
people. It is important to locate your
unclaimed pension funds. There are database you
can access that contain over tens of thousands
of unclaimed pension plan participants with the
last known addresses and employer information,
for whose account have been declared
abandoned. We can search it for you or
guide you to access it. (URL)
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