Who knows a little something about pensions?

Factual Questions
1

I worked for a fairly large business from 1974 til 1983. I was fully vested in the pension plan.

The business went bankrupt in the late 80s. Is my pension from them in the crapper?

It seems to me that pension funds would have been invested by a third party and potentially protected and isolated from bankruptcy proceedings.

Does anyone know?

Or even have a clue on how I would find out?

Thanks!
mmm

2

In the US, I’d start with the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp, unless you already know of any successor companies to the one that went bankrupt. The PBGC essentially insures pension plans by charging fees to companies that are still active, and then shouldering the pension responsibilities for the companies that fail. It was put in place by the US government but is not really part of the US government (it’s not funded by taxes, for example).

If PBGC took over the pension for you, there should have been notification somewhere around the time of the bankruptcy… but it sounds like there’s been plenty of time for that to get lost or forgotten about. Since any company with a pension has to be a member of PBGC, they should know what happened with yours one way or the other.

3

Here’s a basic piece of info… “pensions” as opposed to many other retirement plans are basically just an employer’s promise to pay you a benefit in the future. They are not neccesarily funded and are frequently underfunded… thus there would be nothing or little that is invested with a third party to protect.

4

The pension was most likely guaranteed by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. You can perform a search to see if you or the company are listed.
http://search.pbgc.gov/mp/mp.aspx