The Pension Action Center of the Gerontology Institute at the University of Massachusetts Boston has received two new grants that will help it continue free pension counseling and legal assistance to low- and moderate-income workers in Illinois. The separate grants from The Retirement Research Foundation in Chicago and the United States Administration for Community Living total nearly $200,000.

PAC Director Jeanne Medeiros commented, “the Illinois project has seen significant results since it began. In just five years we have recovered over $3 million in benefits for retirees in Illinois who otherwise would have nowhere else to turn. We are grateful for the support we receive and that we will be able to continue providing free legal assistance to retirees who have rightfully earned pensions during their working years but for various reasons they are unable to collect the benefit.”

In 2012, the center replicated its highly successful New England-based, multi-state pension counseling project to service residents of Illinois. Over the past 23 years, these counseling projects combined have recovered over $57 million in benefits wrongfully denied.

The law of retirement income is extremely complicated and very few lawyers are available to help individual pension participants. For low- and moderate-income workers, the amount of money at stake is often considered too small for a private attorney to pursue, yet it can be crucial to ensuring a comfortable retirement. For many workers, the counseling project is the only resource for securing earned benefits.

Individuals in the New England states and Illinois who are seeking assistance from The Pension Action Center can call toll free at 1-888-425-6067 or submit a request for assistance at https://www.umb.edu/pensionaction/contact