What death benefits are available for your survivors after retirement?
The OPSEU Pension Plan provides benefits for your survivors, whether you die before or after your pension begins. The entitlements for survivors, if death occurs after retirement, are outlined below.
Who gets a survivor benefit?
For death after retirement, benefits normally flow as follows:
ELIGIBLE SPOUSE GETS:
60% of pension
• if no eligible spouse
ELIGIBLE CHILDREN GET:
60% of pension
• if no eligible children
OTHER BENEFICIARIES GET:
residual balance (if any)
• if no other beneficiaries
ESTATE GETS:
residual balance (if any)
For the eligible spouse
If your spouse is eligible for a survivor pension when you die he or she may be entitled to 60% of your pension at no additional cost to you.
If you started receiving an OPTrust pension and you die before age 65, your spouse will receive 60% of your pension until the date you would have reached age 65. At that time, your pension would have been integrated for CPP, so your spouse’s pension is reduced to 60% of your CPP-integrated pension.
For eligible children
If your children are “eligible”, and are the recipients of the survivor benefit, they will share 60% of your pension.
Survivor benefits are payable to an eligible child only if there is no eligible spouse or if the eligible spouse has waived the survivor pension.
Residual balance and payment recipient
If you die after your pension payments have started, a residual balance may be payable. Your adult children, friends or other family members can be named as other benefciaries, in case there is a residual balance payment. We only calculate the residual balance when there are no more survivors, i.e. eligible spouse or eligible children.
To determine if there is any residual balance OPTrust calculates the difference between your contributions plus interest at retirement, minus all the pension payments made to you and your survivors. If your contributions and interest exceed the pension payments this is the residual balance and we will refund it to your other beneficiaries. You can name a other beneficiaries using the Pension Beneficiaries form. If you have not named other beneficiaries, any residual balance is paid to your estate.
Note: generally there is no residual balance after four to five years of pension payments.
Your contributions to Plan, plus interest
minus Pension paid to you + survivor benefits paid
= Residual balance