Thousands of retired clergy and staff of the African Methodist Episcopal Church are one step closer to recovering a meaningful portion of the retirement money they say was mismanaged and lost. The denomination's Department of Retirement Services announced this week that funds from a $44.4 million settlement have been transferred by wire and are now available for distribution to eligible plan participants.

The latest settlement brings the total recovered for the retirees to $106.2 million in the ongoing case, according to Religion News Service. In 2025, a federal judge approved more than $60 million in earlier partial settlements involving the denomination and Newport Group Inc., a third-party administrator connected to the church's retirement services.

The Rev. Brian K. Blackwell, executive director of the AME Church's Department of Retirement Services, said in a notice emailed October 19 that distribution will go to eligible individuals who have experienced a "distributable event" — including retirement, termination of employment or separation from service, the participant's death, or a qualifying hardship.

The legal battle traces back to 2021, when plan participants discovered what they described as gross mismanagement of their retirement funds. Early in the litigation, the plaintiffs said around $88.4 million had been lost, leaving many with only about 30 percent of what they had expected to have for their retirement years. They have since argued that the plan balance should have been $227 million higher than it was when the alleged mismanagement was uncovered.

In court documents, the plaintiffs alleged that Symetra Life Insurance Co. co-conspired with the Rev. Jerome Harris, then director of the AME Church's Department of Retirement Services, in misappropriating retirement funds. The denomination has said that Harris — who retired in 2021 and died in 2024 — provided "deceptive, false and grossly inflated financial statements" about the retirement plan. In April, Judge S. Thomas Anderson of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Tennessee gave preliminary approval to the $44.4 million Symetra settlement; the AME Church itself was not a party to that settlement, and additional litigation continues.

Even after this latest recovery, the math remains painful. After legal fees — roughly a third of the settlement total — participants "stand to recover one-third of its losses through the Symetra settlement," the judge's approval noted. Blackwell told RNS in April that account balances had been restored to about 61.5 percent of their June 2021 statement balances, and that 339 distributions had been made to retired participants.

The human cost behind the numbers is real. In past interviews, retired AME ministers described having to depend on their children or return to work for financial security — "not how they envisioned spending retirement," RNS reported. The AARP Foundation, whose lawyers are part of the plaintiffs' legal team, welcomed the settlement, calling retirement security "compensation earned over a lifetime of work" that "should be there when people need it most."

Some plan participants continue to raise questions about how denominational officials recalculated their account balances and how the plans are being administered. An October 14 court document noted they are "continuing to try to resolve these issues without Court intervention but may ultimately need to file a motion." Blackwell says his office is "working diligently to distribute the funds as quickly and efficiently as possible."

According to reporting by Religion News Service. Read the original at Religion News Service.