Exclusive | JP Morgan doubles down on refusal to pay widow’s pension

The Grinches at JPMorgan doubled down on their refusal to pay out a pension to the widow of a former employee who has been battling the financial giant for the money for more than a decade, the Post has learned.

Elaine Silverberg, 73, has been begging the Jamie Dimon-led bank to hand over her husband Mel’s $331-a-week pension pot in a spat over missing documentation for 13 years, as The Post exclusively reported last month.

But America’s biggest lender has repeatedly denied her claim – and dug in its heels yet again this holiday season, a source told The Post on Friday.

An insider at the global banking powerhouse, whose profits surpassed $12 billion in the third quarter of this year amid a surge in investment banking fees, said there has been “no change” to its Scrooge-like stance that Silverberg is not entitled to a cent.

Sources at the Wall Street titan insisted the bank had carried out “a full and fair review” of her case “multiple times.”

Silverberg’s husband, Mel, died unexpectedly of multiple organ failure at the age of 43 in 1988.

He had worked for a decade as a systems analyst at Chase Manhattan Bank until 1979. Chase Manhattan went on to merge with JPMorgan in 2000.

JPMorgan Chase acknowledges that her husband earned a vested retirement package before leaving the bank. But the bank also said that failed to fill out a form that elected her to benefit from his pension upon his death.

The Ronald Reagan administration passed the Retirement Equity Act in 1984 so spouses like Elaine would automatically benefit if their loved ones died.

“Based on a law change after he left the firm, he could have made an election for a survivor benefit. The firm has no record of him making that election,” the JPMorgan insider said.

Mel’s fully vested cash pile is currently worth an estimated $53,000, Silverberg said.

“I can’t find a lawyer who will want to sue JPMorgan Chase for the amount of money that this case would generate for them,” she said. “I just have to hope for their goodwill in the spirit of the season.”

A JPMorgan spokesman declined to comment.

Silverberg, who was just 37 at the time of Mel’s death and raised their three kids alone, said that the global banking powerhouse gave her the cold shoulder after the Post’s story last month.

“I’m very disappointed that no one replied in any way. No one got back to me, no one offered any kind of an explanation. It has been deafening silence,” the retired government administrator explained.

“I always thought that if Jamie Dimon found out about this he would want to do the right thing and honor the pension,” she added, referring to the 68-year-old Queens native who has been CEO of JP Morgan since 2006 and raked in $36 million last year. 

The grandmother of eight described how Mel would volunteer to work nights and weekends while she took care of their young family.

“He was a team player when they needed him. He was always there for them, she said.

The bank claims it wrote to Mel on three separate occasions after he had stepped down, but Elaine says none of that correspondence ever arrived at the family home.

She said pension managers can only dig up documentation that they say proves they contacted Mel in 1990 — two years after he died.

“They never furnished any proof that they had tried to reach him three times,” she told the Post.

Silverberg, who once enlisted New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and ex-Bronx Rep. Eliot Engel to fight in her corner, urged the Wall Street giant to back down ahead of the forthcoming holiday season.

“It is the time of the year that companies are very generous to their employees and their staff and their higher-ups, and maybe they’ll decide that this is the time to do the right thing,” she said. “They’re punishing my family based on the technicality that they created.”