General Motors (GM) Asbestos Trust Claims

If you spent years doing brake and clutch work as an auto mechanic, or worked in a GM plant, and later developed mesothelioma or another asbestos disease, the asbestos in those parts may be the reason, and General Motors left behind a trust built to pay these claims.

For most of the twentieth century, the brakes and clutches on General Motors vehicles were made with asbestos, because the fiber stood up to the heat of friction. Every time a mechanic blew the dust out of a brake drum, ground a new lining to fit, or replaced a clutch, that asbestos went into the air he breathed. When GM filed for bankruptcy in 2009, its asbestos liability was routed into a trust, the Motors Liquidation Company Asbestos Personal Injury Trust, which has paid more than $136 million to over 25,000 asbestos victims and their families since it began paying in 2012. That trust is open and still paying today.

You don't need to have kept records, and you don't need to remember which GM parts you worked on or which cars they came off. The trust accepts sworn statements, coworker accounts, and work records to document exposure, and reconstructing that is our job, not yours. One thing to know up front: this trust comes from the old General Motors that went through bankruptcy, not from the General Motors that builds cars today, which is a separate company. We explain the difference below. If you can tell us the work you did and when, we have a place to start.

What the GM trust pays

Before any number means anything on a GM claim, you have to know which of the trust's two schedules applies to you, because GM's trust values claims very differently depending on how the asbestos reached you.

If your exposure came from working on GM brakes and clutches, as an auto mechanic, a brake or transmission specialist, or anyone who did that work, your claim falls on the trust's Auto Mechanic schedule, where mesothelioma is valued at $175,000 and can reach $525,000 through Individual Review. Most GM claims are auto-mechanic claims, because brakes and clutches were where GM's asbestos reached the most people.

If you were exposed another way, for example as a GM plant or factory worker around other asbestos materials, your claim falls on the trust's Other schedule, where mesothelioma is valued at $20,000 and can reach $200,000. The two schedules are far apart, so which one applies is the single biggest factor in what a GM claim is worth, and sorting that out is one of the first things we do.

Mesothelioma sits at the top of both seven-level schedules.

Auto Mechanic claims

Other claims

An em-dash means the trust doesn't list that figure: lung cancer 2 has no fixed scheduled value (it's handled through Individual Review), and the two lowest asbestosis/pleural levels are paid at a flat scheduled amount only. As with most trusts, mesothelioma's maximum value sits far above its scheduled value, which is why a serious claim is usually worth the closer Individual Review look.

These are one trust's values, not your whole recovery, and two things matter when you read them. First, every figure is reduced by the trust's payment percentage before it reaches you, which is how a finite fund stretches across the people still to be diagnosed; we explain that below. Second, an auto mechanic almost never worked on only GM parts, so the same career usually supports claims against the other brake and clutch makers' trusts and defendants too. For most people the GM claim is one piece of a larger recovery built across the whole work history.

How GM's products exposed workers to asbestos

General Motors made cars, and for most of the twentieth century the brakes and clutches in those cars were made with asbestos. Brake linings, brake pads, and clutch facings all had to survive the intense heat that friction generates, and asbestos, usually chrysotile, was the fiber the whole industry used to do that. Some brake linings were a third to two-thirds asbestos by weight.

The danger wasn't in driving the car. It was in servicing it. When a mechanic pulled a brake drum, it was full of fine dust worn off the lining, and the common practice was to blow it out with compressed air, which sent a cloud of asbestos straight into his breathing zone. Fitting a new lining often meant grinding or beveling it to size, which threw off more dust, and clutch work did the same. A mechanic who did this day in and day out, in a shop with the bay doors closed, breathed asbestos constantly, and so did anyone working near him.

That's why GM's trust treats auto mechanics as a category of their own. The men most exposed to GM's asbestos were the mechanics, brake and transmission specialists, and shop workers who serviced the vehicles, in dealership service departments, independent garages, fleet shops, and their own driveways. A second group, valued separately by the trust, were the workers inside GM's own plants and foundries, exposed to the asbestos used in manufacturing.

A GM claim is also rarely a claim about GM alone. A mechanic worked on every make of car that came through the bay, and the brakes and clutches he handled were made by many companies, several of which also went bankrupt and left their own trusts. The same career that exposed him to GM parts exposed him to all of them. We come back to that below, because it's where much of the recovery is. To understand exactly how brake and clutch work released asbestos, see how asbestos brakes and clutches caused exposure and auto mechanics and asbestos exposure.

How the GM bankruptcy created the asbestos trust

General Motors' 2009 bankruptcy was one of the largest in American history, and it worked differently from most asbestos bankruptcies. To save the business, GM's good assets, the plants, brands, and operations that build cars today, were sold to a new company, which became the General Motors you know now. Everything left behind, including the company's liabilities for decades of asbestos in its parts, stayed with the old company, which was renamed Motors Liquidation Company and wound down.

The asbestos claims were routed into a trust, set up under the part of the bankruptcy law written for asbestos, Section 524(g). That section lets a court channel every asbestos claim, the ones already filed and the ones still to surface, into a trust that pays them in the company's place, so the bankruptcy can resolve them all at once. The bankruptcy court fixed the old company's asbestos liability at $625 million and funded the trust through the bankruptcy, not with a simple cash payment but with a share of stock in the new GM and units in the bankruptcy's creditor trusts, which the asbestos trust converted over time into the fund it manages today. The plan took effect in 2011, and the trust began paying claims in 2012.

Today's General Motors is a different company. This is the part that confuses people, so it's worth being clear. The General Motors that makes vehicles today is the new company that bought the good assets in 2009. It did not take on the old company's asbestos liability, and it isn't who an asbestos claim is filed against. The old company that made the asbestos parts is gone, wound down through the bankruptcy, and the trust is what it left behind to pay these claims. What that means for you is simple: you're not suing a carmaker, you're filing a claim against a fund that already exists to pay it, and nothing about your claim touches the company building cars today.

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

The trust pays set amounts based on your diagnosis, scaled to how serious the disease is, with mesothelioma at the top of each schedule. As the value table above shows, GM is unusual in having two schedules rather than one, and which applies, the much higher auto-mechanic schedule or the lower other-claims schedule, is the biggest single factor in what a claim is worth. Determining which fits your work is one of the first things we do.

Within whichever schedule applies, how you file decides which amount is within reach, because the trust offers two tracks:

• Expedited Review is the fast track, paying the fixed scheduled value for your disease level with a quicker turnaround.
• Individual Review is the evidence-based track, where the trust weighs the specifics of your case and can pay up to the much higher maximum value. For mesothelioma we always do a thorough exposure-history investigation to determine whether filing Individual Review is warranted, because on the auto-mechanic schedule the gap between the scheduled and the maximum value, $175,000 against $525,000, is large enough to matter to your family.

Whichever schedule and track apply, the trust doesn't pay the full value of the claim. Like every asbestos trust, it pays a percentage of it, currently 10.3%, so a finite fund can reach everyone it owes, including the families who won't be diagnosed for years. That's the same principle behind every bankruptcy: the law shares what there is across everyone harmed, instead of paying a lucky few in full and leaving the rest with nothing.

The trust reviews that percentage regularly, at least every few years, and adjusts it to keep the fund solvent. In December 2025 it lowered the rate to its current 10.3%. A trust funded through a finite pool, as this one was, manages its percentage to make the money last, which is the ordinary mechanics of these trusts rather than a sign of trouble. We confirm the current figure against the trust's notices when your claim is filed.

Is the GM asbestos trust still able to pay?

Yes. It's a mid-sized trust that's been paying steadily for over a decade, and here's the picture from its most recent annual report.

• About $130 million on hand. At the end of 2025 the trust held roughly $130 million in net assets, and the fund held about steady over the year. It's not one of the billion-dollar manufacturer trusts, but it's a substantial fund that's actively paying.
• More than $136 million paid so far. Since it began paying in 2012, the trust has paid out over $136 million to more than 25,000 claimants, including about $11 million in 2025 alone. It's an established, working fund, not a paper promise.
• A percentage managed to last. The trust pays a percentage of each claim, which it reviews and adjusts to keep the fund solvent for the people still to be diagnosed, and it lowered the rate to 10.3% in late 2025. That's the reserve mechanism doing its job.

Because the percentage is modest and the fund is finite, the GM claim is usually understood as one piece of a larger recovery rather than the whole of it, which for an auto mechanic it almost always is. The trust is open, funded, and paying right now, 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 GM trust claim

A trust claim rests on two things: a qualifying asbestos diagnosis, and proof that you were exposed to GM asbestos 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 GM trust pays on asbestos exposure from before December 31, 1982. The reasoning traces back to when the danger became widely known and warnings went up, and we lay out that full logic, along with your options if your exposure came later, in our guide to how asbestos trust claims work. Most mechanics' careers ran straight through that window, so the date is rarely the obstacle people fear.

For mesothelioma, you don't need heavy exposure. Mesothelioma can come from brief, limited exposure, and the trust recognizes that: a meso claim asks for credible exposure to GM asbestos and doesn't have to clear the higher dose threshold that applies to the other diseases. That threshold, Significant Occupational Exposure (SOE), is about five years of total asbestos work with at least two of those years before the end of 1982, and it applies to lung cancer, the other cancers, and the more serious asbestosis claims. SOE counts work done near the dust, not only handling it yourself, so a shop worker who spent his days around the mechanics doing brake work qualifies on the same footing.

Which schedule applies is part of qualifying. Because GM's two schedules are so far apart, establishing that your exposure was auto-mechanic exposure to GM brakes and clutches isn't just a detail, it's most of the value of the claim. That's documented the same way the rest of the exposure is, through your work history and the accounts of people who worked with you, and it's something we build deliberately.

The trust pays milder disease too, at lower amounts. GM has levels for milder asbestosis and pleural disease, paid at small set amounts, on both schedules. They're modest, but they can be worth filing alongside other claims.

Family members can qualify too. If a GM worker or mechanic brought the dust home, on his clothes, his hair, the seats of his car, a spouse who laundered the work clothes or a child in the household can file on the worker's exposure history. how take-home asbestos exposure works.

How the trust documents your exposure

The GM trust doesn't use a customer-by-customer worksite list; it builds the proof around the work and the product. A sworn statement from you, an account from a coworker who remembers the brake and clutch jobs, a family member's statement for someone who has passed, and employment and shop records all count. For a mechanic who spent years doing brake work, that exposure is usually well within reach to document, even decades later, and so is the auto-mechanic classification that drives the value. Putting it together, in the form the trust requires, is our job.

How a GM claim gets filed

A trust claim isn't a lawsuit, and that surprises people who expect a courtroom. There's no judge, no jury, no deposition, and no defense lawyer arguing the other side. You're submitting a documented claim to a fund that already 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 GM asbestos during the covered period, including the work history that puts you on the auto-mechanic schedule where it applies. Putting that together is our job, not yours. We gather the medical records, reconstruct the work history, document the exposure the way the trust's rules require, and choose the track, Expedited or Individual Review, that fits your situation. You don't need to have kept paperwork or remember part numbers to start.

The GM trust has been paying claims since 2012 and is still accepting them today, so the door is open. The fuller mechanics of how trust claims are prepared, filed, and paid are laid out in our guide to how asbestos trust claims work. When you call, we'll tell you what your specific claim is likely to involve and how the timeline tends to run.

A GM claim is rarely the only one

Here's the part that changes the math for most families: the GM trust is usually one claim out of several, and the others come from the very same work.

Start with the bay. A mechanic didn't work on only GM cars, and even on a GM car, the brakes and clutches weren't all made by GM. The friction parts came from a handful of big manufacturers whose linings and facings went into cars across every brand, and several of those companies also went bankrupt and left their own asbestos trusts. The career that exposed a mechanic to GM brakes exposed him to those other makers' brakes and clutches at the same time, plus the gaskets and the other asbestos around a working garage.

The same history that supports your GM claim usually supports claims against several of those other trusts, and because each trust reviews and pays independently, the claims don't compete with each other. They add up. how asbestos trust claims work.

This matters all the more for a GM claim, because the trust pays a modest percentage. On its own, a GM auto-mechanic claim is a meaningful piece, but it's one piece; built alongside the other brake and clutch makers' trusts, and the lawsuits and benefits that can run with them, it's part of something much larger. We walk through a full worked example, several trusts totaled across one career, in our guide to mesothelioma trust settlement values. The full set of channels beyond the trusts is laid out next.

Sources of compensation beyond the GM trust

A GM 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. GM is one, and as the section above explains, a mechanic's career almost always reaches the other brake and clutch makers' trusts too. They review and pay independently, so they stack. how asbestos trust claims work.
• Lawsuits against solvent manufacturers. Several major brake, clutch, and auto-parts makers are still in business and can be sued directly for making and selling a product they knew was dangerous, and 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 dealerships, fleet operators, plants, and shops where the work was done can be held responsible for the conditions they allowed, separate from the companies that made the parts. 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 trust and lawsuit recovery. Military service, including the mechanics who serviced military vehicles and equipment, can support VA disability benefits; civilian work at a federal facility can support FECA benefits (the Federal Employees' Compensation Act); and Social Security disability is available to anyone whose illness stops them from working. how asbestos disability and benefit claims work.

Your GM trust claim has no defenses to answer. It's a paper claim: no opposing lawyer, no deposition, no courtroom, no one arguing the other side. GM's asbestos liability was resolved when the trust was funded, and 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 parts makers still in business and the premises owners where you worked. Those defendants raise the same handful of arguments they raise in most asbestos cases, plus one specific to brakes, and none of them is new to us. The short version is that each one describes a cleaner, smaller version of the work than the one your loved one actually did, and the evidence answers it.