Asbestos trust funds are compensation funds created in bankruptcy by companies that made or used asbestos products. When those companies reorganized, courts required them to set aside money for the people their products injured, including people who would not get sick until well after exposure. Filing trust claims does not require a lawsuit, and for many mesothelioma patients, the trusts are part of a larger claim strategy rather than the whole.
What is an asbestos trust fund?
Asbestos liabilities pushed many manufacturers into bankruptcy. Congress responded with a mechanism in the Bankruptcy Code: a company can reorganize and survive, but only by funding a trust that takes over its asbestos liability. The trust then pays claims under published rules, called trust distribution procedures, rather than the company being sued on a case-by-case basis.
Each trust is independent. It has its own trustees, its own criteria, its own required evidence, and its own rules. There is no single “asbestos trust fund”; there are dozens, one per bankrupt company or corporate family. The major ones are listed in our asbestos trust fund list.
How much money is in the asbestos trust funds?
The most-cited public accounting is a report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office, which found that asbestos bankruptcy trusts held a substantial pool of assets and that the trusts it reviewed had paid a large volume of claims totaling a significant sum (https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-11-819). The figures move as trusts pay claims and investments change, but the scale is the point: this money exists specifically to compensate asbestos disease, and it goes unclaimed when families do not know their exposure matches a bankrupt company’s products.
Who qualifies to file a trust claim?
Each trust publishes its own criteria, but the two pillars are consistent everywhere: a qualifying diagnosis, documented by medical records, and evidence connecting the person’s asbestos exposure to that specific company’s products or operations. A pipefitter with mesothelioma does not file with every trust; he files with the trusts whose products were in his work history. Establishing that match, through employment records, product identification evidence, coworker statements, and site histories, is the real work of trust claims.
How does the claims process work?
Most trusts offer two review paths. Expedited review pays a fixed, scheduled amount for claims that meet the standard criteria, and it is the faster route. Individual review considers the specific facts of a claim and can value it differently, at the cost of time. In either path, the trust pays an approved claim at its current payment percentage, a fraction of the claim’s value set by the trustees so that money remains for future claimants. How those percentages work and why quoted numbers online are usually stale are explained in asbestos trust fund payouts.
The paperwork itself is manageable; the substance is not. A trust claim stands or falls on how well the exposure evidence matches that trust’s criteria, and a thin filing can leave money behind that a properly documented one would have recovered. Trusts also set their own filing rules in their trust documents, separate from any court’s requirements, so a work history should be run against the trusts promptly, even when a lawsuit is the main event.
Can you file trust claims and a lawsuit at the same time?
Yes, and mesothelioma claims are commonly built that way. The trusts cover the bankrupt companies; a lawsuit reaches the solvent ones. The two paths compensate different slices of the same exposure history, so they coexist rather than compete. But sequencing matters: trust filings can interact with a pending lawsuit, including how a verdict is shared among defendants, so the timing should be part of one coordinated plan rather than handled piecemeal.
What does this mean for your family?
You do not need to know which trusts apply to you. That answer comes from the work history: where the person worked and which products they worked on. A lawyer runs that history against the trusts’ published criteria and against the solvent defendants simultaneously, so nothing is left on the table. The review costs nothing, and the work history you already carry in memory is where it starts.
If you want a full run of your family’s exposure history, start with a free case review.