Distraught widow slams JP Morgan for refusing to give her late banker husband's pension

A devastated widow is battling JPMorgan Chase for access to her late husband's pension over a paperwork error.

Melvyn Silverberg worked for a decade as a systems analyst at Chase Manhattan Bank until 1979. He died suddenly in 1988 from multiple organ failure when he was just 43 years old.

Chase Manhattan merged with JPMorgan in 2000 and has become the largest bank in America - earning over $12 billion in 2024 third-quarter profits.

His widow, Elaine Silverberg, 73, said she has been battling the banking giant for over a decade to access to his $53,000 pension pot.

'You would think the bank would want to do the right thing. They have treated me like an insignificant cockroach just to be stepped on,' Elaine told The New York Post .

'If Jamie Dimon [the JPMorgan Chase CEO] were aware of this, he would wish to do the right thing and honor the pension.'

Documents from the Social Security Administration viewed by The Post estimate that Melvyn's account would be worth $331 a month.

Elaine was 37 years old at the time of Melvyn's death and became a single mother to their three children.

She has been trying to gain access to his pension following her retirement as an administrator for the New York State Assembly in Albany in 2011.

JPMorgan Chase refused to give her the money because Melvyn did not fill out the paperwork to elect her as his beneficiary.

'While we sympathize with Mrs. Silverberg, she is asking us to pay without necessary documentation,' a JPMorgan spokesperson said. 'We follow the terms of our pension plan that would not permit individual exceptions.'

The Retirement Equity Act of 1984 made spouses the default beneficiary for married workers but did not go into effect until after Melvyn's death.

'This is a lot of money to me. For them, it's just a joke,' Elaine said. 'I feel like Mel would be mortified about what they are doing to me.'

'I am not destitute, but this was never an issue about poverty — only justice.'

Documents seen by The Post show that the company attempted to contact Melvyn three times about electing spousal coverage - including once in 1990, two years after he died.

Christopher Dagg, a senior staff attorney at the Mid-Atlantic Pension Counseling Project, told the news outlet that the bank's argument was 'weak.'

'We regularly see this recurring problem, where a retirement plan cannot prove it sent a participant an important document but claims it had a procedure in place to try to shift the burden of proof onto the participant, who must then try to prove a negative years later,' he said.