Bondex Asbestos Trust Claims

If you or someone in your family used Bondex joint compound or patching products, or worked around those who did, and later developed mesothelioma or another asbestos disease, the company behind those products left behind a large trust built to pay these claims.

Bondex was one of the best-known names in wall-patching and drywall-finishing products, sold by the bag to contractors and homeowners alike from the early 1960s into the late 1970s. The asbestos in those products generated tens of thousands of lawsuits, and resolving them drove Bondex and its parent into bankruptcy. The reorganization required nearly $800 million, about $797.5 million, to be set aside in a trust that's been paying mesothelioma and other asbestos claims since 2016. That trust is still open, still funded, and currently pays a relatively high share of each claim.

You don't need to have kept old records, and you don't need to remember whether the bucket said Bondex or some other brand. The trust pays on documented exposure to Bondex asbestos products before 1983, and reconstructing that from your work or home-repair history is our job, not yours. If you can tell us the kind of work you did and roughly when, we have a place to start.

What the Bondex trust pays by disease

Mesothelioma sits at the top of the Bondex schedule (Level VIII): a scheduled value of $80,000, and up to $300,000 through the trust's evidence-based Individual Review track. After the trust's current payment percentage, that's roughly $23,600 on the scheduled value and as much as about $88,500 through Individual Review. Because that gap is wide and nearly everyone with a mesothelioma claim files Individual Review, we always do a thorough exposure-history investigation to determine whether filing Individual Review is warranted.

These are the trust's values for domestic (U.S.) claims, before the payment percentage is applied. Lung cancer is split into two levels by exposure and smoking history, and lung cancer 2 (Level VI) is paid only through Individual Review, so it carries no scheduled value. The lowest levels pay a fixed amount with no separate average or maximum.

A trust's schedule shows what one trust assigns to a diagnosis, not what a whole case is worth. Most people with a Bondex exposure history were around other companies' asbestos products too, which usually means other trusts and often lawsuits on top of this one. The Bondex share is meaningful on its own, and it stacks with the rest.

How Bondex products exposed workers to asbestos

Bondex made wall-finishing and repair products: joint compounds and ready-to-use joint cement for taping and texturing drywall, interior and exterior patching and resurfacing compounds, wall and ceiling textures, roofing cement and coatings, paints, and repair putty. For about a decade and a half, many of them carried asbestos, added for body, crack resistance, and a smooth finish.

The exposure came from how the products were used, not from anything unusual:

• Mixing the dry powder. The joint and patching compounds arrived as a dry mix that was poured and stirred with water on site, raising dust before a trowel ever touched the wall.
• Sanding the dried compound. Once it set, the finisher sanded the joints and patches smooth, by hand or with a pole sander, and that sanding turned dried asbestos compound back into fine airborne dust. It's the signature exposure of the work.
• Patching, texturing, and roofing. Cutting and scraping old patch, spraying and troweling texture, and tearing off and recoating roofing all released fiber the same way.
• Breathing a neighbor's dust. The painters, carpenters, and laborers working the same unfinished rooms breathed the same sanding dust, whether or not they ever picked up a sander.
• Carrying it home. The dust settled into hair and clothing, so spouses who shook out and laundered work clothes, and children in the household, were exposed too.

Two things set Bondex apart. It was sold heavily as a do-it-yourself product, in hardware stores and lumberyards, so the exposure reached homeowners and weekend remodelers, not only tradesmen. And it was sold in enormous volume over many years. The result is an unusually wide group of people exposed: drywall finishers and tapers, painters, carpenters and laborers, plasterers, roofers, demolition crews tearing out old finishes, and ordinary homeowners doing their own repairs. The dust itself is the same story told on our asbestos joint compound page, which carries the industrial-hygiene measurements in full.

How the Bondex bankruptcy created the asbestos trust

Bondex was founded by the Reardon Company in 1959 and began putting asbestos in its products in 1961. In 1966, Republic Powdered Metals, the company that grew into today's RPM International, acquired the business and ran Bondex as a subsidiary. Asbestos was phased out of the products by 1977, but because these diseases can take decades to appear, the lawsuits kept coming for years afterward, eventually numbering in the tens of thousands. In 2002 the parent organized its specialty-products operations under Specialty Products Holding Corp. (SPHC), which became Bondex's holding company and gives the trust its formal name.

In 2010, SPHC and Bondex filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the kind that lets a business reorganize rather than shut down, and two related companies, Republic Powdered Metals and NMBFiL, joined the case a few years later. The cases were handled together in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, and a joint plan of reorganization was confirmed in December 2014.

Asbestos bankruptcies are resolved through a part of the law written for exactly this problem, Section 524(g) of the Bankruptcy Code. It lets a court set up a trust to take over a company's asbestos liability, then issue a channeling injunction, a court order routing every asbestos claim, the filed ones and the ones not yet brought, into the trust instead of the company. The company funds the trust up front, and in return it and its parent are protected from being sued over asbestos again. Through that process the trust was funded with about $797.5 million, made up of cash and a multi-year note backed by RPM, which was paid off ahead of schedule by 2018. The trust began accepting claims on July 1, 2016, and that's what you file against today.

The parent company is alive and well. RPM International is a large, publicly traded company, and the point of the bankruptcy was to move Bondex's asbestos liability into the trust so the rest of the business could carry on. That matters for two reasons. The records and history behind your exposure still exist, and because the trust, not any operating business, pays these claims, filing yours doesn't take a dollar from anyone working there today. One point of confusion is worth clearing up: Bondex-branded products are still sold now, made by DAP, an RPM company, and those modern products do not contain asbestos and have no connection to the old liability or the trust. The claims here concern the asbestos products Bondex made decades ago.

What the Bondex trust pays, and why it's a percentage

The trust offers two filing tracks. Expedited Review is the fast path: if your diagnosis and exposure fit the trust's preset criteria, the claim is paid the fixed scheduled value for your disease level. Individual Review is the evidence-based path: the trust weighs the specifics of your case and can pay up to the higher maximum value. For mesothelioma, the gap between the scheduled and maximum values is large, and in practice nearly every mesothelioma claim is filed through Individual Review, which is why we always do a thorough exposure-history investigation to determine whether filing Individual Review is warranted.

Whichever track you file, the trust doesn't pay the full value of a claim. It pays a percentage of it, currently 29.5%, which is a relatively high share by the standards of these trusts.

The reason there's a percentage at all is the same principle behind every bankruptcy: when a company can't cover everything it owes, the law spreads what exists across everyone it harmed, so a few don't collect in full while everyone else gets nothing. An asbestos trust has to do that across decades, holding back enough for the families who won't be diagnosed for years. Bondex funded the trust with nearly $800 million, and even a fund that large can't pay every claim in full: if it paid each mesothelioma claim at the $300,000 maximum, the money would run out after only a few thousand people. Paying a set share of each claim is what lets the trust compensate everyone, the people already sick and the ones who aren't yet.

The encouraging part is the direction it's moving. The trust raised its payment percentage from 22% to 29.5% in January 2024 and paid catch-up supplements to people who had filed earlier at the lower rate. A trust raising its rate and topping up past claimants is the opposite of one running dry, and it means we can tell you with real confidence what a Bondex claim is likely to pay.

Is the Bondex trust still able to pay?

Yes, and comfortably. Here's the picture from its most recent annual report.

• About $574 million on hand. At the end of 2025 the trust held roughly $574 million in net assets, up from about $557 million the year before, because its investment returns ran ahead of what it paid out.
• More than $420 million paid to victims so far. Across nearly a decade the trust has paid more than $420 million to claimants, on close to 15,000 claims, and it paid about $31 million in 2025 alone.
• The rate has gone up, not down. The trust raised its payment percentage in 2024 and paid supplements to earlier claimants, a fund being managed up rather than stretched thin.

None of that means the money is unlimited, and the reserves it holds are exactly why the trust pays a set percentage rather than the full value of each claim: it's keeping enough back for the long line of claims still to come. But the trust is open, funded, and growing, and a claim filed today is paid at the current percentage. We track the annual reporting and can walk through the full financial picture with you when you call.

Who qualifies for a Bondex trust claim

A claim rests on two things: a qualifying asbestos diagnosis, and documented exposure to a Bondex asbestos product during the period the trust covers. The diagnosis side is medical. The exposure side is where the trust's rules come in, and where most of our work happens.

The exposure has to fall before the end of 1982. The trust pays on exposure before December 31, 1982, the period when these products carried asbestos. Most careers and even most home-repair histories that touched these products ran through that window, so the date is rarely the obstacle people fear. We explain your options if your exposure came later in our guide to how asbestos trust claims work.

For mesothelioma, you don't need heavy exposure. Mesothelioma can come from brief, limited exposure, and the trust recognizes that, so a meso claim isn't held to the higher-dose threshold that applies to the other disease levels. Those higher levels, the lung cancer and severe asbestosis levels, ask for about six months of Bondex exposure plus Significant Occupational Exposure, roughly five years of asbestos work that can add up across different jobs. That includes time spent working in close proximity to others doing the dusty work, not only doing it yourself, which matters in a setting where one person's sanding dust filled the room.

You don't need to have named the brand, and there's no site list. Bondex was sold through stores and suppliers, not to a handful of named plants, so there's no approved-worksite list to be on or off. What the claim needs is credible evidence of exposure to a real Bondex product, by your account, a coworker's, or a family member's. Importantly, the trust's own rules say that failing to identify Bondex in an earlier lawsuit or in another trust claim doesn't bar you from recovering here, as long as you meet the medical and exposure requirements. Reconstructing which products fit your work and era is our job.

Family members can qualify too. If a worker brought Bondex dust home, or a homeowner sanded it indoors, a spouse who laundered the work clothes or others in the household may file on the same exposure history.

How a Bondex claim gets filed

A trust claim isn't a lawsuit. There's no judge, no jury, no deposition, and no defense lawyer on the other side. You submit a documented claim to a fund that exists to pay it, and the trust reviews it against its written rules and pays on its schedule. What the claim needs is proof of two things, your diagnosis and your exposure to a Bondex asbestos product before the cutoff, and putting that together is our work, not yours. We gather the medical records, reconstruct the history, and choose the track that fits.

The trust is open and still accepting claims, and it works through them in the order they come in, so timing matters. It also has its own filing-timing rules on top of your state's deadlines, which is one more reason to call promptly rather than wait. The fuller mechanics of how trust claims are prepared, filed, and paid are in our guide to how asbestos trust claims work.

A Bondex claim is rarely the only one

The Bondex share is meaningful on its own, but it almost never stands alone, and the reason is the nature of the work.

A finisher or a finishing crew didn't use one company's joint compound for a whole career; they used whatever was on the truck or the shelf, across different brands, jobs, and years. The same unfinished rooms held other companies' texture, ceiling products, and drywall, and a homeowner's garage might have held several brands of patch and compound over the decades. Several of those makers went bankrupt too and left their own trusts, including the large gypsum and wall-product companies, and others are still in business and can be sued directly. The same exposure history that supports your Bondex claim usually supports a stack of others, and because each trust reviews and pays independently, the claims add up rather than compete.

One connection is worth calling out, because it's easy to miss. Bondex didn't mine the asbestos in its compound; it bought the fiber in, and one of its suppliers, T.H. Agriculture & Nutrition, left an asbestos trust of its own. That means the same Bondex product behind your claim can also support a T.H. Agriculture & Nutrition (THAN) trust claim, through the fiber that went into it, a second trust claim off the same exposure that we check for as a matter of course.

That's why the thorough exposure investigation is worth so much. A work history that turns up several joint-compound and wall-product trusts, plus lawsuits against solvent makers, can carry a mesothelioma case well past what any single trust pays. We walk through a worked example, several trusts totaled across one career, in our guide to mesothelioma trust settlement values. Our U.S. Gypsum trust page covers one of the larger wall-product trusts that often files alongside this one.

Sources of compensation beyond the Bondex trust

A Bondex claim usually sits inside a larger recovery, and the channels run in parallel without canceling one another out. We file across all of them that apply.

• Asbestos bankruptcy trusts. The Bondex trust is one, and a finishing, construction, or home-repair history almost always reaches several others, the makers of the other joint compound, texture, and patch on the same jobs. They review and pay independently, so they stack. How asbestos trust claims work.
• Lawsuits against solvent manufacturers. Not every maker of these products went bankrupt. Several are still in business and can be sued directly for selling a product they knew was dangerous, and Bondex itself drew sizable jury verdicts before its bankruptcy. A lawsuit can recover more than a trust claim, though it takes longer. How asbestos product liability lawsuits work.
• Premises liability against the site owners. The general contractors and building owners who controlled the jobsites can be held responsible for the conditions there, separate from the companies that made the products. How premises liability claims work.
• Federal and disability benefits. These depend on where and how the work was done, and they're paid on top of the rest. Social Security disability is available to anyone whose illness stops them from working; work that reached a shipyard or military setting can add Longshore benefits (LHWCA, the federal program for maritime and harbor workers) or VA disability benefits. How asbestos disability and benefit claims work.

Your Bondex trust claim has no defenses to answer. It's a paper claim: no opposing lawyer, no deposition, no courtroom. The trust either pays the claim or it doesn't, on its written rules.

Defenses only come up on the lawsuit side, the claims that run alongside the trust against the makers still in business and the site owners. Those defendants raise the same handful of arguments they raise in most asbestos cases, and none of them is new to us.