Practical Tools for a Clear, Confident Retirement.

Discount chain across the Northeast with thousands of hourly and store-manager plan participants.

Ames grew to more than 700 stores before liquidating in 2002. Store staff who worked five or more years in the 1970s and 80s were frequently vested and never notified.

Decades of catalog, service center, and store employees across every state.

Sears employed generations of part-time and seasonal workers. Records fragmented across divisions, so many former employees never received benefit statements after moving.

The plant closure that led Congress to create federal pension insurance.

When Studebaker's South Bend plant closed in 1963, thousands lost promised benefits — the case that drove ERISA and the creation of the PBGC in 1974.

Steel operations across Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania with large union plans.

LTV's repeated bankruptcies transferred multiple plans to federal trusteeship. Surviving spouses are a large share of the still-unclaimed benefits.

Five-and-dime lunch counters and stores in nearly every American downtown.

Woolworth's shifted to athletic retail and closed its variety stores in 1997. Long-tenured counter and stockroom staff often had modest but real vested benefits.

West Coast department stores with a large part-time workforce.

After private-equity ownership and a 2008 liquidation, Mervyn's employees scattered across the Sun Belt — a classic recipe for lost-contact benefits.