What happens when a 2011 Tier member retires, but passes away prior to their employee contributions being completely paid out in monthly retirement benefits?

How we proceed is determined by the payment option chosen at retirement.

If the member was married at retirement and chose a joint and survivor payment option, we will continue to pay the surviving spouse for their lifetime.

If the member chose the life income annuity payment option, the remaining employee contribution balance is paid to the beneficiary listed on the Designation of Beneficiary for Employee Contributions form.

If the member chose the guaranteed payment option and passed away prior to the guaranteed payment period closing, the beneficiary named for the guaranteed payments would continue to receive monthly benefit payments until the payment period closed. After the payment period closes, if there are any remaining employee contributions, they are payable to the beneficiary named on the Designation of Beneficiary for Employee Contributions form.

The important thing to remember is that employee contributions belong to the retiree. If the retiree passes away prior to receiving all their contributions, the remainder will be paid according to the payment option chosen at retirement as well as in accordance with section 104.1091, RSMo.

April 18 marked the tax filing deadline for the 2022 tax year. If you need to adjust the 2023 tax withholding for your monthly MPERS benefit, you can do so at any time. There are two ways to make those adjustments.

1. Log in to your myMPERS account and select withholding elections. Then select if you would like to change your federal or state withholdings. If your tax withholding screen doesn’t look like the example below, choose “view in grid” in the upper right corner. This will change the screen to grid view.

2. Forms may be accessed by visiting the forms page on www.mpers.org or they can be provided to you by a tax professional. Please submit completed forms to MPERS via mail, fax, or secure document upload.

Please remember that effective January 1, 2023, MPERS no longer accepts the W-4P Substitute.

Federal tax withholding changes must be submitted on the federal W-4P and state tax withholding changes must be submitted via the MO state W-4P.

As a friendly reminder, MPERS cannot provide tax advice.

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Send comments and suggestions to Julie.West@mpers.org.