A federal employee with a partner is going to retire in the next couple of years. Does the spouse have automatic rights to pension and benefits even if employee does not elect the spouse as a beneficiary?
Generally, if you are married at the time of retirement, you are
required to provide full survivor annuity benefits for your spouse unless your
spouse consents to a lesser amount or no survivor benefits.
If no survivor benefit is payable, OPM will pay a lump-sum death benefit
under the statutory order of precedence. Under the order of precedence, OPM
must pay the lump-sum to any beneficiary the employee/retiree has designated as
the recipient of that benefit. If the employee/retiree did not designate a
beneficiary, then the next person entitled under the order of precedence is the
surviving spouse.
As for Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) benefits, the experts at the Federal Retirement Thrift
Investment Board provided this answer: “A participant can designate any
individual, organization, a trust or will as a beneficiary without spousal
consent. However the spouse must consent to withdrawal that it is in any form
other than a joint life survivor annuity with the spouse as the joint
annuitant.”