Elaine Silverberg pensioner’s widow fights JPMorgan Chase for 13 years for $331 monthly pension following her late husband, Melvyn Silverberg’s death 35 years ago as bank hides behind alleged technicality. $53K remains untouched and unpaid as multi-billion financial institution refuses to budge.
A former bank worker’s widow has fought her late husband’s employer for over 13 years in a bid to collect $331 monthly pension that she alleges the billion dollar financial outlet refuses to pay her cause he didn’t fill out the necessary paperwork.
Melvyn Silverberg, who worked for a decade as a systems analyst at Chase Manhattan Bank until 1979, died unexpectedly at age 43 in 1988 from multiple organ failure the nypost reports.
Chase Manhattan went on to merge with JPMorgan in 2000, going on to become JPMorgan Chase, the multi billion dollar banking powerhouse which has booked back to back record profits. In the latest reporting quarter, the banking powerhouse went on to book $12 billion profits amid a surge in investment banking fees.
JPMorgan Chase claims former worker failed to fill out necessary paperwork
Speaking to the nypost, Elaine Silverberg, 73, alleges battling the Wall Street giant for more than 13 years in a bid to recover her late husband’s pension kitty following her own retirement. She was just 37 at the time of her late husband’s death, leaving her to raise their three kids alone.
In the ensuing 35 years since her late husband’s death, the pension has ballooned to $53K which continues to remain untouched and which JPMorgan Chase has no intention of paying out to their former worker’s widow.
Officials at the Social Security Administration estimate the untapped account to be worth $331 a month, according to a letter sent to Mel’s widow by the federal agency.
‘If Jamie Dimon (JPMorgan’s CEO) were aware of this, he would wish to do the right thing and honor the pension,’ Silverberg told nypost.
‘Nothing is $$$$$$ stopping them from doing so,’ she told the tabloid. ‘You would think the bank would want to do the right thing. They have treated me like an insignificant cockroach just to be stepped on.’
JPMorgan Chase acknowledges that her husband earned a vested retirement package before leaving the bank. But the bank also says the former worker failed to fill out a form that elected his wife to benefit from his pension upon his death.
JPMorgan Chase denies $331 monthly pension to late employee’s widow, claims she lacks ‘necessary documentation’ https://t.co/jKR4MUE2SA pic.twitter.com/fsasaPdKOk
— New York Post (@nypost) November 4, 2024
Bank wrote to dead employee asking for necessary information
Yes kids a form stands between JPMorgan doing the right thing and a 73 year old retiree being forced to go to the tabloids to fight Wall st egregious behavior shielding itself behind a ‘technicality.’
The Reagan administration passed the Retirement Equity Act in 1984 to ensure spouses like Elaine would automatically benefit if their loved ones passed away. But because Mel died before the change in the law, the bank argues Elaine isn’t entitled to a payout.
Explained a spokesperson for JPMorgan Chase: ‘While we don’t sympathize with Mrs. Silverberg, she is asking us to pay without necessary documentation. We follow the terms of our pension plan that would not permit individual exceptions.’
Reviewed correspondence shows JPMorgan claims it contacted Melvin Silverberg three times to ask him about electing for spousal coverage, including on one occasion in 1990 — two years after he died.
The firm maintains it had not been informed about his passing at the time. But shouldn’t they have known when he failed to turn up to work?
Despite the bank’s claims, Christopher Dagg, a senior staff attorney at the Mid-Atlantic Pension Counseling Project, an organization that defends former employees and their families in pension disputes, when reached out by the nypost, said that the bank’s argument is ‘weak.’
‘We regularly see this recurring problem, where a retirement plan cannot prove it sent a participant an important document, but claims it had a procedure in place to try to shift the burden of proof onto the participant, who must then try to prove a negative years later,’ the attorney told the nypost.
Elaine has gone so far as to enlist the support of New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and Eliot Engel, formerly a Congressman from New York, to try and convince JP Morgan to release Melvin’s retirement fund.
‘His spouse deserves the pension he worked so diligently towards,’ Engel, who left office in 2021, wrote four years earlier in a letter seen by the nypost.
‘Mrs Silverberg was informed by several employees at Chase she qualified for her spouse’s pension on many occasions,’ Engel wrote.
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. And that too might be what big corporate entities often bet on when fighting consumer or worker demands who have an ever army of willing lawyers to do their bidding.
‘This is a lot of money to me. For them it’s just a joke,’ Silverberg told the tabloid. ‘I feel like Mel would be mortified about what they are doing to me.’
Adding, ‘I am not destitute, but this was never an issue about poverty — only justice.’
While for JPMorgan Chase …. it just might be all about money and stock value. As long as it can get ‘legally, and technically’ get away with it. Morals and ethics aside….
