JPMorgan Chase denies pension to employee’s widow for lack of ‘necessary paperwork’

JPMorgan Chase has refused to pay an estimated $331-a-month pension to the widow of one of the bank’s former employees — because he failed to fill out the necessary paperwork before his untimely death, according to The New York Post.

Melvyn Silverberg, who worked for 10 years as a systems analyst at Chase Manhattan Bank until 1979. Nine years later, he died unexpectedly at age 43 from multiple organ failure.

Following her own retirement in 2011, Elaine Silverberg, his widow, has been attempting to recover her late husband’s pension from JPMorgan Chase, which became the name of Chase Manhattan Bank, where her husband worked, when it merged with JPMorgan in 2000. However, JPMorgan Chase has refused benefits from the $53,000 pension plan amassed by her husband, which has been sitting untouched for more than 35 years. Officials at the Social Security Administration estimate the untapped account to be worth $331 a month.

“You would think the bank would want to do the right thing,” Silverberg told The New York Post. JPMorgan Chase acknowledges that Melvyn earned a vested retirement package before leaving the bank, but he failed to fill out a form that elected her to benefit from his pension upon his death, according to the bank.

Related: Claiming Social Security widow(er) benefits: It’s complicated

In 1984, the Retirement Equity Act, which amended the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, was passed in response to concerns that women were not receiving their fair share of private pension benefits. However, because Melvyn left Chase before the change in the law and failed to fill out the required paperwork before his death, the bank argues his widow isn’t entitled to the pension.

“While we sympathize with Mrs. Silverberg, she is asking us to pay without necessary documentation,” a JPMorgan spokesperson said. “We follow the terms of our pension plan that would not permit individual exceptions.” However, Elaine told the Post none of the three letters ever arrived.

Elaine, who live in New Jersey, even enlisted New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Eliot Engel, formerly a congressman from New York, to try to convince JP Morgan to back off its hardline stance on Mel’s retirement fund, but to no avail.

Elaine, who retired from her job as an administrator for the New York State Assembly in Albany in 2011, added that she cannot afford to hire hotshot lawyers to take on one of the most powerful financial institutions in the world. “This is a lot of money to me. For them it’s just a joke,” Silverberg said.