About Us
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The Pension Action Center is comprised of the New England Pension Assistance Project and the Illinois Pension Assistance Project. The Pension Action Center is staffed by experienced pension lawyers and pension counselors who can help you understand your rights under pension law and claim the retirement income benefits that you have earned. Assistance is free of charge to anyone with a pension question or problem, regardless of age, income, or value of the claim.
The Pension Action Center also offers:
- answers to some of the frequently asked questions that we receive.
- informative fact sheets on pension and retirement issues and investor education.
- referrals to other organizations and resources that may assist you.
Questions we can help resolve
The world of retirement income is a complex maze of federal law and regulation, corporate pension policies, Social Security, and financial investment. The pension counseling staff at the Pension Action Center ensure that individuals do not have to navigate this maze alone.
The Pension Action Center staff help workers, retirees, and their families by resolving problems like these:
- A person is entitled to a pension but, because s/he either does not understand the process or the employer is unresponsive to her/his application, s/he is not receiving it.
- A person has a vested pension in a company that has gone bankrupt and the employee cannot find the plan.
- A person has worked for a company or union over a period of years but is being denied a pension because of a break-in-service or for other reasons that the company claims s/he is not vested. The individual does not know how to go about finding employment records to prove her/his eligibility.
- A company abandons its 401(k) plan and the employees cannot access their money.
- A widow, after the death of her husband, finds she is impoverished because her husband's pension is terminated, even though she never waived her right to a survivor benefit.
- A worker starts receiving a pension substantially less than he expected because the plan has miscalculated the benefit.
If you are outside of New England or Illinois, please visit the link below to see if there is a similar service available in your area. Currently, 30 states are served by a free pension-counseling program.
Learn more about PAC from this recent Annual Report.