The beneficiary you named when you joined may not be the one you’d name today. This lesson covers what the Fund pays if you die while still working, who gets it, and how to check and change your beneficiaries.
The short answer. Every member names a beneficiary for the Fund’s death benefits on joining, and the Fund says to update it whenever your situation changes. You check it on webCOPS or by mail, never by phone or email, and you change it on webCOPS or with the Fund’s Change of Beneficiary form. Your union, your Deferred Comp account and your union annuity fund each keep their own beneficiary records, so check those too. One payment doesn’t follow your form at all: the line-of-duty pension goes to the survivors the law names.
From the Fund’s Tier 2 and Tier 3 booklets, June 2026. In the Tier 2 booklet these pages still carry an October 2024 footer. Links are at the bottom of this page.
Tier 2. For any death, the Fund refunds your accumulated contributions and pays unpaid salary and any worked vacation and lost time (p.28). On top of that:
Tier 3. After 90 days of service, the Ordinary Death Benefit is three times your salary raised to the next $1,000, plus a return of your accumulated contributions (p.25). A line-of-duty death is covered by the Accidental Death Benefit (pp.25-26).
The beneficiary you name decides who gets the lump sums. In Tier 3, “The Ordinary Death Benefit is paid to a beneficiary designated by the member. Members may designate multiple beneficiaries” (p.25). In Tier 2, the refund of accumulated deductions in a line-of-duty death is “paid to the designated beneficiary(ies), or the member’s estate if no beneficiary” (p.29).
The line-of-duty pension is different. It goes to your spouse, then qualifying children, then a dependent parent, in an order the law sets, whatever your form says (Tier 2, p.29). In Tier 3, “Eligible beneficiaries are dictated by statute” (p.26), and if there are none, the benefit becomes an Ordinary Death Benefit paid to “the designated beneficiary on file” (p.26).
Both booklets say: “All members designate a beneficiary (or beneficiaries) for Death Benefits when joining the PPF; however, whenever a member’s social condition changes (e.g., marriage, separation, divorce), the beneficiary designation should be updated.” They suggest tax time and open enrollment as good times to look, and any marriage, divorce, birth, adoption or death as a reason to.
When you retire, your pension option is a separate decision with its own beneficiary. On a joint-and-survivor option you name one person, and that beneficiary “may not be changed” (Tier 2 booklet, p.23). Lesson 15 covers the option and its deadline.
Sources: NYC Police Pension Fund, Tier 2 Summary Plan Description, June 2026, pp.23 and 28-31; NYC Police Pension Fund, Tier 3 Summary Plan Description, June 2026, pp.25-28; DEA, SBA and PBA annuity fund beneficiary forms; Superior Officers Council Annuity Fund.
This lesson is general, not a recommendation for your own case. If you roll money into an IRA that we manage, we are paid on it. If it stays where it is, we are not. Confirm every figure and date with the New York City Police Pension Fund before acting.