Good Samaritans Surprise Widow Shunned by JPMorgan, with Check for Husband’s $53K Pension

By: Serach Nissim

A New Jersey widow, who has been embroiled in a legal battle with JP Morgan over her deceased husband’s $53,000 pension, got a big surprise from a pair of strangers. As reported by the NY Post, for the past 13 years widow Elaine Silverberg, 73, has been in a bitter battle with the banking giant, which has refused to pay the pension because of a clerical error by her late husband. She recently received a surprise payment for the entire sum — but not from the bank—it was from a pair of good Samaritans who heard the story and were “touched”.

Her legal saga had been reported by the NY Post back in November, and some 600 miles away in North Carolina, business partners Roy Messer, 57, and Bill Rice, also 57, decided to be heroes to this stranger. The two men, who work as health insurance brokers in Charlotte, were disappointed that the biggest lender in the country would snub a grandmother in such a way and surprised her with their own money. “I couldn’t believe for such an amount of money that they wouldn’t want to do the right thing. There is no doubt that her husband would have wanted that money to go to her and his kids,” Rice said of the bank’s refusal, and further referencing the bank’s CEO who boasts a personal net worth of roughly $2.8 billion.

“I imagine that for Jamie Dimon, this is like a nickel falling out of his pocket. I would like to believe that he just doesn’t know (about this).”

Messer, who had served in the Marine Corps, said he was “touched” by Silverberg’s story and that sending her the money was “the right thing to do.” “I don’t know her and I could have very easily just turned the page. But when something like that reaches out and grabs you, I looked at it and thought: ‘What if that was my mother?’” he told The Post.

For her part, Silverberg was left stunned by their kind gesture, saying it “restored my faith in mankind.” “In this crazy world we live in, it is remarkable that such kindness also exists. I am flabbergasted at their extreme generosity,” she said. Silverberg, a former government administrator, unexpectedly lost her husband back in 1988. Her husband, Mel, had been a system analyst with Chase Manhattan Bank until 1979, but he failed to fill in the necessary forms before he suddenly passed away at the age of 43 from multiple organ failure. His wife insisted that he was owed $331-a-month pension, with the total value estimated at $53,000. Despite the Retirement Equity Act passed in 1984, aimed at making sure spouses would automatically benefit if their loved ones died, the Wall Street giant repeatedly denied the widow’s appeals.

JP Morgan, which posted record profits of $58.5 billion last year, insisted that it sent Mel letters on three separate occasions asking him to elect survivor coverage after he left the firm. Silverberg has countered that the letters never came to the family’s home, and that the only request she got was two years after his death. Silverberg repeatedly pleaded with the company and even succeeded in tapping elected officials to voice her claim to the bank, but was unsuccessful.