| The Civil
Service Retirement System (CSRS) was established in 1920, providing
retirement, death and disability benefits for civilian employees of the
Federal government. CSRS was replaced in 1987 by FERS, the Federal
Employees Retirement Systems, although some two million families
currently receive monthly CSRS retirement or survivor benefits.
Located in "The Cave" - a converted
limestone mine 268 feet below ground in Boyers,
Pennsylvania, OPM's Retirement Operations Center has
no estimate and no way of
computing the value of unclaimed government pension
benefits in its custody; but the figure is in the billions of dollars. Records on two million former Civil
Service workers are not automated, but rather stored in
some 35,000 file cabinets, by alphabetical order. This
system does not permit sorting by age, a likely indicator
of unclaimed and unpaid benefits.
Benefits
are not declared abandoned unless unclaimed by the
designated recipient's 115th birthday or 30 years after
the date of death, at which time they become unavailable
for any future claim.
For
information and assistance tracing a missing pension government pension
go to:
Government
Pension Search (For information
on non-government unclaimed pension benefits go to:
Pension Search )
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