INDIANAPOLIS The widow of Roger Youngs, the late CEO of Financial Center FCU, has filed suit against the credit union, saying it owes his estate almost $940,000 under a retirement agreement.
In the suit, filed last week in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, Mary Ellen Youngs claims the $440 million credit union owes her the money under a series of severance contracts Youngs agreed to upon his hiring in 2003, then amended in 2007, after he came down with cancer, which claimed his life in November 2011.
Youngs was a dedicated and well-known credit union executive, having worked for the New York CU League’s shared branching, as CEO of Power FCU in Syracuse, N.Y., and director of Midstates Corporate (Members United) CU, before taking the helm at Finance Center. His credit union was eventually cited with NAFCU’s 2009 Credit Union of the Year Award.
The severance agreement called for Youngs to resign in 2009 and continue to receive a monthly salary as a credit union employee for two years, according to court records. But Youngs’ widow claims his estate is also owed almost $1 million from a retirement investment the credit union first took out when Youngs joined the credit union in 2003.
Youngs, suffering from a long fight with cancer, was declared disabled and unable to work in December 2011, after the two-year severance agreement he signed in 2009 had run out.
According to the suit, upon his hiring, the credit union made a separate $2.5 million retirement investment in Youngs’ name to finance future retirement benefits that his estate is entitled to. That consisted of an initial investment of $1.5 million that was supposed to grow at 5%, or $75,000 a year, according to the suit. Youngs’ widow claims she is entitled to $926,000, including $400,000 of excessive earnings in the investment, which she says she should split with the credit union, under the terms of the severance pact..
The credit union responded to the suit by saying it has complied fully with the 2011 severance agreement and that Youngs wasn’t entitled to the remaining payment because his resigned in 20009, before his disability was declared in 2011, forfeiting the retirement benefit to which he would have been entitled to.
Finance Center FCU was chartered in 1955 to serve personnel at the former Fort Benjamin Harrison, which now houses a major finance center for the U.S. military.
