Jeffrey Rollison died in 2015, just months before he was due to retire from his job at Procter & Gamble. But now, 35 years after they separated, he’s embroiled in a legal battle over whether his ex-girlfriend should inherit his $1 million retirement account.
Mr. Rollison, from Bristol, signed up for a P&G employee retirement plan in 1987, naming his then-girlfriend, Margaret Sjostedt, as the sole beneficiary in a handwritten document. The couple separated two years later, but Mr. Rollison never changed the beneficiary information, according to court records.
At that time He died of a heart attack at age 59.Rollison’s retirement benefits amount to more than $750,000. Its value has reportedly increased since then.His estate, led by his brothers, has been challenging the distribution of his assets to Sjostedt, now Margaret Rosinger, 68, for nearly a decade, arguing in U.S. District Court that P&G breached its fiduciary duties by failing to properly notify Rollison of beneficiary designations he had filed with the company.
They argue the money should go to the heirs, not to Rosinger, with whom Rosinger split “on acrimony” decades ago, according to court records. David Gould, an attorney for the heirs, said Rosinger “never retained her as a beneficiary” and believes she was left out of the inheritance.
Neither Rosinger’s lawyers nor P&G responded to requests for comment.
According to court records, Rosinger and Rollison met at Tyler State Park when they were in their 20s and began dating in 1978. After living in Newtown, the couple moved to Sullivan County, where Rollison bought a home.
There, Ms. Rossinger began working as a waitress, and in 1986 Mr. Rollison got a job at a nearby P&G plant. A year later, Mr. Rollison joined the company’s employee profit-sharing savings plan and named Ms. Rossinger as the beneficiary and “housemate,” according to court documents.
The couple separated in 1989, and her estate alleges in court documents that Rosinger was unfaithful. Rosinger, meanwhile, said in a 2022 affidavit that she broke up with Rollison because she wanted to get married and have children and Rollison wasn’t interested. She married him in 1990 and had two children with him before he died, according to court documents.
Meanwhile, Rollison began dating another woman, Mary Lou Murray, in 1991. The two broke up in 2014. Court records show that Murray was at one point listed as a beneficiary on Rollison’s life insurance, but Rollison removed her from the account after the couple split up. The two never married, and a federal court ruled in 2021 that Murray cannot receive any severance pay from P&G.
The fact that Rollison changed the beneficiaries on his other accounts after major life events shows he was “good faith” in the designations, Gould said. As for the status of Rollison’s retirement plan, he added, P&G is to blame.
“He would have chosen his family,” Gould said. “He has siblings, nieces and nephews.”
But because Rosinger’s name remained on Rolison’s handwritten retirement plan form, she could inherit the funds in the account because federal law requires companies to pay the plan’s last named beneficiary. P&G filed a lawsuit in federal court in 2017 asking the court to determine who should receive the funds, and in 2020 the court ordered the company to pay Rosinger. Reconfirm in AprilBut lawyers for Rollison’s estate have filed a petition for a new trial and to have the decision overturned in the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, according to court records.
The estate alleges that P&G breached its fiduciary duties by inadequately communicating with Rollison about beneficiary options, and that the messages Rollison received about his accounts could easily have been misinterpreted.
For example, one message indicated that Rollison “did not make a beneficiary designation online” and that “any prior beneficiary designations enrolled in the plan would be retained by P&G,” court documents state. Gould said P&G’s messages were too general.
But the company maintains that its communications were adequate and that it routinely warned account holders when they were changing service providers for plans that moved to an all-online format in 2015. In her April ruling, U.S. District Judge Karolyn Mehalchik wrote that P&G notified Rollison of his beneficiary options “numerously” between 1989 and 2015 and that Rollison should have known how to change his designation.
“Despite notice and instructions, Mr. Rollison failed to designate new beneficiaries for the P&G investment plan,” Mehalchick wrote. As a result, she added, Mr. Rosinger is “the rightful and lawful beneficiary of the plan funds.”
As the legal battle over Rollison’s retirement account continues, the funds in the account remain in escrow and have yet to be distributed.