Q. I’m a FERS employee who is getting ready to retire. I plan to elect a full survivor benefit annuity for my wife. Will it be increased by COLAs or change with age? A. If you elect a full survivor benefit, your basic annuity will be permanently reduced by 10 percent. If you die, your widow will receive a survivor annuity that equals 50 percent of your unreduced annuity; in other words, the annuity you would have received before you made the survivor election. That survivor annuity will be increased by any cost-of-living adjustments that were made to retiree annuities following your…
Browsing: Death benefits
Q. If I get married after I retire and elect a survivor annuity for my husband, I understand that I would need to pay the difference of what I would have paid had we been married at retirement plus 6 percent interest. For example, if I retired in January and married in June, if I understand this correctly, I need to wait 9 months for it to be effective so 9 plus 5 (months I would be married) would equal 14 months. If, for example, the difference in the annuity would be $50, I would owe $50×14 = $700 plus…
Q. I’m a widow and I’ve been receiving a survivor annuity based on my late husband’s federal employment. When I die can that benefit be passed on to my children? A. No, it can’t. Your survivor annuity will end with your death.
Q. I’m a FERS employee. I understand that when I retire I will have two survivor annuity options, either 50 percent or 25 percent of my full annuity. What does “full annuity” mean? Does it mean that my wife will get 50 percent of what my annuity would be before the 10 percent reduction to pay for it, or will she get 50 percent after the 10 percent is taken out to pay for the full survivor annuity? A. If you die, she would get 50 percent of what your annuity would have been if your annuity hadn’t been reduced…
Q. I was married to a U.S. Postal Service worker for 22 years. In the divorce I was awarded half of his pension. I got remarried before 55. My second husband has since died, in July 2018, and left no pension benefits. I am 59 years old now. Am I still entitled to half the pension of the first husband, since I am no longer married (now widowed)?
Q. My sister-in-law was a retired civil service employee. She left her husband a survivor benefit. He is now planning to marry again. Will he lose the benefit? He is 72 years old.
Q. My father-in-law has an annuity taken out of his pension for the last 26 years. His wife died in 1998, and to this day he thinks he can’t stop the annuity from coming out of his pension. Is there a law he can turn to that would stop the 10 percent from going out of his pension?
Q. I retired from the U.S. Postal Service in 2005. I was under CSRS during that time. When I retired I elected an annuity for my spouse (for after my death). We are getting a divorce. I wanted to know by how much will my annuity increase, and what happens to the money I paid into the death benefit annuity?
Q. I elected to have my husband receive 25 percent of my basic annuity. If he dies before I do, what happens? Will my annuity be recalculated without a survivorship benefit, or does it stay the same?
Q. If your ex-wife who received half your retirement dies, will your annuity go back to what it would have been?