OPM urged to notify CSRS participants about survivor annuity rule

A Washington advocacy group has asked the Office of Personnel Management to make sure federal employees in the Civil Service Retirement System are aware of a loophole that could prevent their spouses or ex-spouses from claiming a survivor's annuity.

The Pension Rights Center sent OPM acting Director Kathie Ann Whipple a letter urging her to notify all CSRS participants that if they left government and died before claiming their federal benefits, their widows or widowers would not receive an annuity.

"It is essential that CSRS employees have this information when making decisions that could have such significant impact on their families," the letter stated.

The request comes after a Pension Rights Center project aiming to prevent poverty among older women received calls from women caught off-guard by the policy. "Because participants in CSRS are not covered by Social Security, these pension benefits are, for many of these women, the primary or only source of retirement income," the group wrote.

Under current law, survivors of federal employees covered by CSRS receive annuities if the employee died while working for the government or retired and immediately began collecting pension benefits. But survivors of CSRS employees who left the government and died before age 62, or reached age 62 but died before filing an application for CSRS retirement, are eligible only for a lump-sum payment of the employee's retirement contributions, without interest.

In 2007, Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, introduced pension reform legislation that included language granting survivor benefits to spouses and former spouses of CSRS participants regardless of when the employee left federal service. The measure would have brought CSRS in line with the newer Federal Employees Retirement System and many private sector pension plans.

Daniel Adcock, legislative director for the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association, said on Thursday that NARFE has long advocated such legislation. In the meantime, federal human resources offices should be more forthcoming when employees leave government service, according to Adcock. "It's not a state secret if you look at OPM's CSRS handbook," he said. "But whether personnel offices go to the trouble of exploiting this discrepancy between FERS and CSRS -- it's up to whether that event happens."