JPMorgan Chase The bank has refused to pay its estimated $331-a-month pension to the widow of one of its former long-serving employees — with the excuse that she was unable to complete the necessary paperwork before her untimely death, The Post has learned. Failed to complete.
Melvin Silverberg, who worked for a decade as a systems analyst at Chase Manhattan Bank until 1979, died unexpectedly from multiple organ failure in 1988 at the age of 43. Chase Manhattan merged with JPMorgan in 2000.
Ellen Silverberg, 73, told The Post that she has been fighting the Wall Street giant for more than 13 years to get her late husband’s pension money back after his retirement. Mel was only 37 at the time of her death, leaving her to raise her three children alone.
But America’s biggest bank, whose profits surged more than $12 billion in the third quarter amid rising investment banking fees, has refused to garnish $53,000 in pension money deposited by her husband over 35 years. Has remained untouched by time.
Social Security Administration officials estimate the unused account is worth $331 a month, according to a letter sent to Mel’s widow by the federal agency that was reviewed by this outlet.
‘If jamie dimon “If we knew about it, he would want to do the right thing and honor the pension,” Silverberg told The Post. Referring to the longtime CEO of JPMorgan Chase.
“There is no one stopping them from doing this,” he said. “You would think the bank would want to do the right thing. They have treated me like an insignificant cockroach to be stepped on.”
JPMorgan Chase acknowledged that her husband had earned a vested retirement package before leaving the bank. But the bank also says Mel failed to fill in the form opting her to benefit from her pension upon her death.
The Reagan administration passed the Retirement Equity Act in 1984 to ensure that spouses like Ellen would automatically receive benefits if their loved ones passed away. But because Mel died before the change in the law, the bank argues that Elaine is not entitled to a cent.
A JPMorgan spokesperson said, “While we sympathize with Mrs. Silverberg, she is asking us to make payment without the required documentation.” “We adhere to the terms of our pension plan which will not allow individual exceptions.”
Correspondence reviewed by The Post shows that JPMorgan claims it contacted Mr. Silverberg three times to ask him about an election for spousal coverage, including on one occasion in 1990 — his Also included two years after death.
The company said it was not informed about his passing at the time.
But 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, told The Post that the bank’s argument is “weak.”
“We regularly see this recurring problem, where a retirement plan cannot prove that it sent a key document to a participant, but claims it did, in an attempt to shift the burden of proof onto the participant. There was a process for this, which then one must try to prove negative years later,” he said.
Elaine also enlisted New Jersey Senator Cory Booker and former New York Congressman Eliot Engel to try and persuade. JP Morgan retreated Its tough stance on the Mail’s retirement funds.
“His spouse deserves the pension for which she worked so diligently,” Engel, who is leaving office in 2021, wrote in a letter seen by The Post four years ago.
“Multiple Chase employees informed Mrs. Silverberg that she qualified for her spouse’s pension on multiple occasions,” Engel wrote.
One of Mel’s former colleagues, Eleazer Lew, attacked JPMorgan Chase, saying that Ellen’s late husband would be “rolling in his grave” if he had known how the bank was treating his widow.
Allen, who retired from her job as administrator of the New York State Assembly in Albany in 2011, said she could not afford to hire hotshot lawyers to take over one of the world’s most powerful financial institutions.
“That’s a lot of money for me. To them, it’s just a joke, Silverberg said. “I think Mel would be sad about what they’re doing to me.”
“I’m not destitute, but it was never an issue of poverty – only justice,” he told The Post.
