The Cook County Pension Fund is part of 13 public pension systems covered under the Illinois Retirement Systems Reciprocal Act.

If you participated with more than one of the pension systems covered under the Reciprocal Act during your public service career, all of your service credit can be combined to calculate a pension from each system.

Retiring under the Reciprocal Act is optional.  If you earned service credit under more than one reciprocal system, you can choose to retire under the Reciprocal Act or to retire separately with each system.  In most cases, you will receive a higher combined benefit by retiring under the Reciprocal Act.  However, in some  cases a member's combined pension could be higher if he or she retires separately under each system.    We strongly encourage you to speak with us or any of your pension plans prior to making a decision.
 

What are the Benefits to Retiring under the Reciprocal Act?

Retiring under the Reciprocal Act offers two main benefits:

1. You are able to combine service credit earned with different Illinois Reciprocal Retirement Systems to receive a larger pension, even though you might not have earned enough service credit to retire individually with a single system. 
2. Each system uses your highest earnings when it calculates your pension.  This can be very beneficial if you stopped participating in one system years ago at a lower salary.  When you retire under the Reciprocal Act, all of your systems use your highest final average salary, and then apply the specific plan rules to calculate your pension benefit.

Click here for a list of systems that participate in the Reciprocal Act

Questions

If you have any questions about your benefits, please contact us.