If you’re a public employee in Illinois, your pension is usually the largest financial asset you’ll ever earn. When a criminal case hits, the fear often isn’t just jail or probation. It’s losing the retirement you spent decades building.
Most people learn about pension forfeiture too late. They negotiate a plea to get it over with, focus only on sentencing, and don’t realize the pension issue can become the real disaster. In Illinois, pension forfeiture is not theoretical. In the right kind of case, it can turn a criminal conviction into a lifetime financial loss.
If you read nothing else, read this: Illinois pension forfeiture comes up in two ways. One is a felony conviction legally connected to your public service. The other, which is often missed, is that some pension provisions can forfeit benefits upon any felony conviction while you’re receiving disability benefits, even without a job-connection requirement.
Illinois forfeiture is not automatic for every public employee with any felony conviction. Where the Pension Code uses job-related language, courts treat the central issue as whether there is a clear and specific connection between the felony and the employee’s official duties or public service. In plain English: did the job make the crime possible, or did the person use their position, authority, access, or official duties in a meaningful way? If the answer is yes, pension risk goes up fast.
But some provisions are written so that a felony conviction while receiving disability benefits triggers forfeiture without the job-connection language. If disability is in the picture, you cannot assume that an off-duty offense is safe. The first step is identifying which statutory pathway you’re dealing with.
Across multiple Illinois pension systems, the job-related forfeiture trigger appears in the same basic form: pension benefits are not paid if the person is convicted of a felony relating to or arising out of or in connection with service in the covered role. That language appears in the Chicago police forfeiture provision and parallel language for state employees.
That phrase is where the fight lives. The employee often experiences the case as personal, isolated, or off-duty. The government frames it as a breach of public trust or misconduct tied to service. Whether that framing holds depends on the facts and on what the criminal record ends up saying about your role.
Most people hear connected to the job and think it means I was at work. That’s the wrong lens.
Courts focus on whether the criminal conduct has a clear, specific connection to the employee’s official duties, or to the use of the employee’s status, authority, or position. If the criminal case record makes your public role central, the pension board’s job gets easier. If the facts show the offense is truly unrelated to service, that can become a powerful limiting principle.
Public employees often want to resolve the criminal case quickly for stability and a path forward. That instinct can be financially catastrophic.
Pension forfeiture fights frequently turn on the criminal record: what you pled to, what the elements imply, and what the factual basis says about your official role. If the plea narrative makes your status, authority, or duties a core part of the misconduct, you may have just built the pension board’s case for them.
Plea strategy in public-employee cases is different. You’re not negotiating only over sentencing exposure. You’re negotiating over downstream consequences, including pension, employment, certifications, and long-term financial survival.
Some Illinois pension provisions include forfeiture language that turns on whether you were receiving disability benefits at the time of the felony conviction, and that language can be broader than the job-related forfeiture clause. When disability benefits are in play, the nexus argument may not be the safe harbor you think it is. If disability is part of your situation, it needs to be analyzed early and explicitly.
If your criminal exposure is federal, you may be dealing with two different pension threats. One is the Illinois pension forfeiture analysis. The other is federal criminal forfeiture, which can operate under separate federal statutes and can reach assets as substitute property in certain circumstances. The other is federal criminal forfeiture, which is a separate federal process that prosecutors may pursue in certain cases and may attempt to reach assets through substitute-property theories, depending on the facts and the law.
Pension-risk analysis in federal cases cannot be Illinois-only. It has to account for the separate federal forfeiture track when relevant.
Do not improvise statements to investigators, supervisors, internal affairs, or anyone who could later become part of the record. If this becomes a forfeiture dispute, early statements become exhibits.
Do not assume your employer’s internal process is separate from your criminal case. Administrative interviews often generate admissions, timelines, and official duty framing that later shows up in the criminal record and in pension proceedings.
Do not rush into a plea before someone has analyzed pension exposure. A fast plea can lock in a service-connected narrative that is hard to unwind, even when the sentence is light.
Identify the pension system you’re in. Identify whether disability benefits are part of your status. Identify the government’s theory about how the conduct connects to your public role. Then build a criminal strategy that protects your freedom while also protecting your retirement.
Illinois pension forfeiture can be triggered by a felony conviction legally connected to public service, and in some systems by a felony conviction while receiving disability benefits. Where job-relatedness is required, the question is whether there is a clear, specific connection between the felony and official duties, not simply whether the defendant happened to be a public employee. If your criminal allegation touches your public role, pension risk must be evaluated early.
If you are a public employee in Illinois facing a criminal investigation or charge and you’re concerned about your pension, you need a defense strategy that accounts for real-world consequences, not just the criminal court outcome. Glozman Law handles serious criminal matters with an eye on collateral exposure, including pension forfeiture and other career-ending consequences.
Contact Glozman Law for a confidential consultation.
This article is for general informational purposes and is not legal advice. Pension forfeiture rules and outcomes depend on the specific pension system, governing statutes, and the facts and disposition of the criminal case.