How You Can Protect Your Pension Benefits

Excellent article, Phil. It offers a good reality check and helpful advice.

If any of your readers have trouble obtaining or understanding the documents that you recommend in this article, they should know that free pension counseling services are available. This is legal advice, not financial planning advice.

The U.S. Administration on Aging currently funds several nonprofit organizations around the country to provide free pension counseling to anyone with a question about their traditional pension or 401(k) plan, no matter the person's age or income level. For a list of these pension counseling projects, visit http://www.pensionrights.org/counseling-projects

The pension counseling projects answer questions – free of charge - that often private attorneys and government agencies are unwilling or unable to answer. They provide assistance on a wide range of pension issues, including getting and evaluating information from unresponsive retirement plan administrators, finding "lost" pensions, resolving disputes over benefit calculations, and helping clients understand and exercise their pension rights in divorce.

Currently, six regional pension counseling projects serve 29 states. A client does not have to be a resident of a project state in order to receive assistance. If the person’s company or pension plan is headquartered in a project state or has offices in a project state, or if the person lived in a project state while earning the pension, he or she can call on that project for help.

If you do not fall into any of the counseling projects' jurisdictions, you can get help by visiting www.pensionhelp.org or by calling the Pension Rights Center at 202-296-3776.

Nancy Hwa

Communications Director

Pension Rights Center

Washington, D.C.

Pension Rights Center of DC 3:48PM October 26, 2011