New York Retirement Plans for Public Employees Can Leave Surviving Spouses With Nothing - It's Past Time To Change That

Albert Feuer, New York Retirement Plans for Public Employees Can Leave Surviving Spouses With Nothing - It's Past Time To Change That, 96 NYSBA J. (2024):

Surviving spouses of retired New York public employees may learn soon after burying their spouses that they will receive no plan survivor benefits because the default retirement benefits of all those plans is an annuity whose payments end at the retiree’s death. 

The article introduces the proposed Equity for Surviving Spouses Act (ESSA) which would change that result prospectively by giving rights to surviving spouses of New York public employees that are similar to those that have been provided for many years to surviving spouses of retired federal employees, of private employees, and of employees most other states.