If you have an eligible spouse and die after retirement, your spouse will receive a 60% survivor pension from the OPSEU Pension Plan.* This survivor pension will be reduced for CPP integration on the date you would have turned age 65. For example, if you are receiving an OPTrust pension and die before age 65, your spouse’s initial survivor pension will equal 60% of your monthly pension amount before CPP integration. Starting with the month following what would have been your 65th birthday, the survivor pension will be re-calculated based on 60% of your CPP-integrated pension amount.
Your surviving spouse may also be elgible for a survivor pension from CPP, if he or she meets CPP’s criteria. However, this will not affect the amount of the OPTrust survivor pension or the date on which it is reduced for CPP integration.
To illustrate how OPTrust survivor pensions are integrated with CPP, let’s use the example of Luis on the previous pages. In this example, Luis retires at age 57 with a monthly OPTrust pension of $2,000. When he turns 65, his OPTrust pension will be reduced to $1,442 per month for CPP integration.
If Luis dies at age 62, his eligible spouse would be eligible for a survivor pension of $1,200 per month (60% x $2,000). On the month after Luis would have turned 65, his spouse’s survivor pension will be reduced to $865, or 60% of his CPP-integrated pension of $1,442.
* The standard OPTrust survivor pension is based on 60% of the retiree’s pension. Before you retire, you can choose to increase the survivor pension to 65%, 70% or 75%. To pay for an increased survivor pension, your own pension amount will reduced forever.