There's something more to this story; if you die in the line of duty as a State employee, you don't leave your family poor; that's one of the reasons to be a State  employee.   Maybe one of them wasn't vested in one of the later Tiers of PERS, maybe one of them didn't check the right box on a benefits form; this is the sort of stuff that a bureaucrat with a brain can fix.    As I said above, I'm sympathetic to continuing health insurance to the majority of the children or the remarriage of the spouse, but a State employee who dies in the line of duty doesn't leave a family destitute.