Symetra’s $44.4 Million Settlement With AME Church Clergy and Staff Won Final Approval: No Claim Form and No Check — Each Share Goes Into the Retirement Plan’s Trust. One-Third Goes to the Lawyers First, and Our Arithmetic Leaves Roughly $28.9 Million for Nearly 5,000 People.

The Symetra settlement pays nobody directly. The official settlement website says it plainly: “you will not receive a check or cash payment for your pro-rata share.” Instead, each class member’s share is “automatically deposited into the Qualified Trust on your behalf.”

The Qualified Trust is the trust account the AME Church set up to hold the retirement plan as it existed on June 30, 2021. According to the official FAQ it is managed and invested by Disciplina Group LLC, an independent fiduciary in Nashville, and it is “different than the new retirement plan with Wespath that was established after this Lawsuit commenced.” Once the settlement money has been transferred there, class members who are eligible to take distributions under the plan can take a full or partial distribution of their share. Until a class member is eligible, the share stays in the trust on that person’s behalf.

For questions about your own plan benefits and eligibility, the official site points to Benefits Plus, which it says manages plan benefits, at 859-554-3115 or admin@benefitsplusky.com — not to the settlement administrator.

The final approval order awards class counsel one-third of the settlement amount, including one-third of the interest the fund earns before distribution. It also reimburses $500,131.69 in out-of-pocket expenses and grants $20,000 to each class representative; the fee motion counts ten named plaintiffs.

Our own calculation, on the principal alone: one-third of $44,400,000 is $14,800,000. Subtract that, the $500,131.69 in expenses and $200,000 in service awards, and $28,899,868.31 remains — roughly $28.9 million. Two things still move that number: notice and administration costs and taxes on interest come off, and two-thirds of the interest earned in escrow is added. The order leaves the final total to be fixed on the settlement’s effective date, and we found no published final figure.

AARP Foundation says the settlement benefits nearly 5,000 current and former clergy and lay employees. Spread evenly, $28.9 million over 5,000 people would be about $5,780 each — but nobody is paid evenly. A pastor with decades in the plan and a recent hire can be far apart, because shares follow account balances.

The settlement agreement fixes the formula: your share is your account balance on June 30, 2021 divided by the total of all class members’ balances on that date, multiplied by the net settlement amount — adjusted for any distributions you took between June 30, 2021 and the date the balances were retroactively calculated. The settlement administrator, Verita, does the allocation. The official FAQ will not name a figure for anyone: any amount is “only an estimate.”

Class members who mailed an opt-out request by July 17, 2026 receive nothing from this settlement and keep their own claims against Symetra. That deadline, which was also the objection deadline, has passed.

The fairness hearing was held on August 19, 2026 in Jackson, Tennessee. The court’s minute entry says it denied the objections that had been filed — the docket shows one from the AME Church itself — and granted final approval; the signed order was entered the same day as a final judgment under Rule 54(b).

Under the settlement agreement, nothing may be distributed before the Effective Date, which is the day the time to appeal runs out if nobody appeals. A federal civil appeal must generally be noticed within 30 days, which from August 19 points to about September 18, 2026 — a date that has already passed. The agreement then says the fund “shall be distributed by the Settlement Administrator within seven (7) Days of the Effective Date.”

What we could not confirm: neither the official site nor AARP Foundation’s September 30 announcement gives the date on which money actually moved into the trust. On the public docket mirror we saw no entry labelled as a notice of appeal through September 29, 2026, but that mirror lists several entries only by type. If your account does not show a settlement credit, Benefits Plus is the place to ask.

This is the third settlement in the litigation. AARP Foundation lists an agreement with the AME Church in August 2024 to restore $20 million to the plan and one with Newport Group, Inc. in March 2025 for $40 million, and puts the total with Symetra at $106.4 million. The three headline amounts add up to $104.4 million; class counsel Lee Segui describes the first two as totaling more than $61.4 million. Neither statement explains the gap; the official FAQ notes that settlement money sits in an interest-bearing escrow account until it is distributed.

The loss behind all of this: the fee motion puts the difference between the plan’s represented value in June 2021 (roughly $126 million) and its actual value (roughly $38 million) at $88,489,163. AARP Foundation says the lawsuit alleged that approximately $90 million was improperly diverted through risky investments, commissions, fees and other transactions, and that many participants lost at least 70% of their retirement savings. Symetra denies that it is liable or did anything wrong, and the court has not decided otherwise.

Claims against the remaining defendants are preserved. AARP Foundation names Robert Eaton, the Motorskill entities, Day & Night Solar, the Estate of Dr. Jerome Harris and Sandra Harris among them. According to the August 19 minute entry, the parties consented to a trial on the merits before the judge, and a status conference was set for October 21, 2026 at 10:00 a.m. Class counsel has reserved the right to ask for further fees from any future recovery.

The official website is amechurchretirementsettlement.com, run by the administrator Verita; its Symetra section sits at ssw.amechurchretirementsettlement.com. The administrator’s contact details are AME Church Employee Retirement Fund Litigation Settlement Administrator, c/o Verita Global, PO Box 301134, Los Angeles, CA 90030-1134, telephone 1-833-419-3900, email info@amechurchretirementsettlement.com. Because no claim is required, nobody should ask you for a fee, a claim number or bank details to “release” your share. The notice also states that neither Symetra nor the Church may retaliate against anyone for taking part in, opting out of or objecting to the settlement.