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Although retirement income is important, your Plan also helps protect your family’s financial security after your death—either before or after retirement. By law, all pension plans must provide certain survivor benefits for married participants who are vested. Your Plan goes beyond that and provides valuable benefits to your survivors whether you are married or not.
Topics Below
Types of Death & Survivor Benefits
Death Benefits Before Retirement
Death Benefits After Retirement
Naming Your Plan Beneficiary
How to Apply For Death Benefits
Appeal Procedures
Types of Death & Survivor Benefits
The Plan provides a variety of death and survivor
benefits. One set is available to families of participants who die before
retirement. The other is for the families of participants who die after
retirement. Click on the set of death and survivor benefits you want to
learn about:
Death Benefits Available Before Retirement
Death
Benefits Available After Retirement
Naming Your Plan Beneficiary
Some of the Plan’s death benefits are only paid to your Plan beneficiary. You should name a beneficiary and keep that designation updated if there are any changes in your family status. Here are the rules for naming your Plan beneficiary.
Naming a Beneficiary
Before You Retire. Before you retire, you can name a Plan beneficiary to receive any lump sum death benefits that are payable if you die before retirement. Your Plan beneficiary can be any person or persons including your estate.
To name a Plan beneficiary, you must complete a Beneficiary Designation Form supplied by the Pension Trust and send it to your Area Administrative Office so that it is received before your death.
When You Retire. When you retire, you need to name a new beneficiary for any lump sum death benefits payable at your death. If you are married when you retire and want to name someone other than your spouse as your Plan beneficiary, your spouse’s consent is required.
Changing Your Plan Beneficiary
You can change your Plan beneficiary at any time by naming a new beneficiary on a Beneficiary Designation Form supplied by the Pension Trust and sending it to your Area Administrative Office. Your new beneficiary designation is not effective unless this signed form is received by an Area Administrative Office before your death.
Only beneficiary designations that are made on forms supplied by this Pension Trust are recognized by the Plan. Beneficiary designations made in your will or on forms used by other pension or health and welfare trusts or for other union benefits (for example, life insurance) are not accepted by this Pension Trust.
Request a Beneficiary Designation Form by contacting your Area Administrative Office.
You can also download the Beneficiary Designation Form for Non-Retired Participants (You will need Adobe® Acrobat® Reader™ on your computer):
Beneficiary Designation Form for Non-Retired Participants
(Adobe® Acrobat® PDF™, 37K)
Once you download the form to your computer, you can print it, fill it in and mail it back to an Area Administrative Office. (You cannot send the form via e-mail.)
Changes in your family status, such as divorce, marriage or other family changes, do not affect any Plan beneficiary designation you previously made. You should consider naming a new Plan beneficiary if you marry or are divorced, if your spouse dies, if you have children or if your designated Plan beneficiary dies.
Preferential Beneficiary
If you do not name a Plan beneficiary or if your named beneficiary dies before you, your Plan looks at the following classes of survivors:
- Spouse (on date of death)
- Children (either natural or legally adopted)
- Parents
- Brothers and sisters
- Your estate
Your Plan beneficiary is selected from the first of these classes with a survivor. If there is more than one survivor in that class, they share equally in any lump sum death benefit payable. 
Note: If you retired with a pension effective date before January 1, 1992, you need to use a different Beneficiary Designation Form that you may request by contacting your Area Administrative Office.
Click here for questions and answers about Plan Beneficiaries.
How to Apply For Death Benefits
You should keep your family and Plan beneficiary informed of the death and survivor benefits explained in this chapter. Tell them to promptly apply to your Area Administrative Office for any possible death and survivor benefits in the event of your death.
No benefits can be paid without a formal application. Your family or Plan beneficiary can request the necessary application forms from any Area Administrative Office.
They may be asked to provide documents such as your death certificate, marriage certificate, spouse and child birth certificates and Social Security Award Letter (for child benefits).
Your family can file their applications before they have all the proof needed for payment of benefits. They should not delay applying for benefits just because they don’t have all the documents.
In no case can a benefit be paid until a written claim is sent to and approved by the Pension Trust. Benefit application forms are available from any Area Administrative Office.
Your family should contact any Area Administrative Office if they have questions.
Appeal Procedures
If your family’s or beneficiary’s application for benefits is denied, your Area Administrative Office notifies them in writing of the reasons for the denial.
The notice also explains how they can appeal this decision. Click here for details about your Plan’s appeal procedures.
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