Jan. 26--FORT LAUDERDALE -- Wedding bells could be ringing for some police and firefighter widows who until now have found the price to remarry more than they were willing to pay.
Current city policy forces those surviving spouses, 118 currently, to give up their pension benefits if they remarry, but commissioners have tentatively approved doing away with that rule.
The penalty has proven so strong an inhibitor to remarriage that actuarians say there's no real cost to the city to make the change. Only one surviving spouse over 27 years of retirees remarried and gave up her benefit, officials say.
The proposed policy is good news for Anna "Nancy" Cone, 70, whose police detective husband died of cancer in 1990 after putting in for retirement. She later found love again, but wouldn't forfeit her benefits.
"I've been engaged for 18 years. Perpetually engaged," Cone said. "I wasn't about to give that money up ... Back then, when you were married to a police officer, you made a lot of sacrifices."
The policy, which will come up for a final vote Feb. 5, would apply to surviving spouses of police and fire employees who retired in 1999 or earlier. Those spouses receive 60 percent of the benefit paid out when the retiree was alive.
The spouses have been seeking an end to the remarriage penalty for more than a decade. The current commission first wanted assurances it wouldn't be an extra cost to the pension plan.
The actuarian's point: If you keep the penalty, the spouses won't remarry, so the city will pay the benefit until they die. By allowing them to remarry, the city is still paying the benefit until they die.
"I see it as a fairness issue," said Commissioner Bruce Roberts, a former city police chief. The change won't affect Roberts or his wife, because he retired from the pension plan in 2001 when he became chief.
Retirees after 1999 had a choice of plans, including ones that allow surviving spouses who remarry to continuing receiving benefits. Those options weren't available to the earlier retirees, forcing many of their spouses to choose between the much needed money and a wedding certificate.
"I also see it as an issue of what's right and wrong," Roberts said. "Some people feel strongly that they should marry if they're going to stay together."
Cone knows the uncomfortable feeling of having to answer a granddaughter's questions of why she and "pop-pop" live together but aren't married. She knows others who have sacrificed such companionship because they could not afford to give up the benefit.
"I know that we have some widows that are probably very lonely because of their upbringing," Cone said. "One lady brought her priest to plead her case."
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