QUESTION:

Early Retirement Discrimination

Please Help! Here's my situation...In the spring of 2006 my wife filed for divorce...we both agreed to this...in the meantime my place of employment(which
I worked at for 30yrs.) filed for bankruptcy. They
offered early retirement packages and had meetings
of how there was no alternative but to retire.
I am 49 yrs.old and had enough time to retire so I
did. We have been married 25yrs. and I know the laws
spell this as a "long term marriage" with this, my
pension no longer is defined as a retirement benefit,
but rather a marital asset or "bank account" to be
divided up accordingly. Ok... I accept that, but
here's the problem...The way the contract spells out
my pension the division of this asset will leave me
below the poverty level. If I was 62 my pension
would look like this $1500 base pension $1500 soc.s.
...my wife would be entitled to 42% or $630 she would
recieve approx. $900 of her own ss. At 49 however,
I recieve $500 base pension and $2500 supplemental
pay(soc. sec. bridge). The court has already ruled
that the bridge money is also an asset...so at 49 I
will be paying more than a person at 62, $1200 pr mo.
We have no children at home and she earns approx. $30,000yr. but has no pension and I'm told her income doesn't count. She will be doing quite well. I have aquired two bad knees while working and bad eyes (I was a welder).
The "referree" feels that I should get operated on
so I can get another job...what happened to retiring? My lawyer told me that I have no hope of a
fair decision. My age is my detriment when it comes
to the distribution of assets. Any suggestions would
be greatly appreciated Thanks, VMG New York
asked by vmgcgp, 9/17/2007
Categories: Early Retirement, Pensions
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