Owens Corning Asbestos Trust Claims

If you or someone in your family worked around Owens Corning's Kaylo asbestos pipe insulation and later developed mesothelioma or another asbestos disease, the company left behind a trust built to pay exactly these claims.

For most of the twentieth century Owens Corning was one of the country's best-known building-materials companies, and its Kaylo high-temperature asbestos pipe and block insulation wrapped the steam lines, boilers, and process piping in factories, power plants, refineries, and ships across the country. The weight of asbestos sickness drove the company into bankruptcy in 2000, and its reorganization funded a trust with about $3.4 billion, in cash and company stock, to pay the people that asbestos harmed. That trust, the Owens Corning/Fibreboard Asbestos Personal Injury Trust, has been paying mesothelioma and other asbestos claims since 2006, and it's still open and still paying.

You don't need to have kept your old records, and you don't need to have known the insulation was Kaylo or that Owens Corning made it. The trust pays on documented exposure to Owens Corning asbestos products, and reconstructing that, from work history, military records, and the trust's own documentation, is our job, not yours. If you can tell us where you worked and when, we have a place to start.

What the Owens Corning trust pays by disease level

This page covers claims for Owens Corning products, which the trust pays from its Owens Corning sub-account on the schedule below. Mesothelioma sits at the top, at Level VIII, with a scheduled value (the trust's preset amount) of $215,000 and a maximum value of $650,000. That gap is the whole reason the filing track matters: for mesothelioma we always do a thorough exposure-history investigation to determine whether filing Individual Review is warranted, because Individual Review is what opens the higher figure your evidence can support. Every amount below is then reduced by the trust's payment percentage, explained further down the page.

A dash in the scheduled column (Lung cancer 2, Level VI) means that level has no fixed fast-track amount; it's paid through review against the average and maximum instead. A dash in the average and maximum columns (Level I) means that level is a small flat cash-discount payment with no higher tier above it.

These are one sub-account's values, not your family's whole recovery. The amounts above are what the Owens Corning sub-account assigns to each disease before its payment percentage comes off, and almost everyone exposed to Owens Corning asbestos was exposed to other companies' products too, each with its own trust or lawsuit. What the Owens Corning claim is worth on its own matters far less than what the whole set of claims comes to, and we come back to that below.

How Owens Corning's Kaylo insulation exposed workers

Owens Corning's signature asbestos product had a name many old tradesmen still remember: Kaylo. It was a high-temperature insulation, sold as molded pipe covering that wrapped around steam and process lines and as flat block that went on boilers, tanks, and other hot equipment, and it was packed with asbestos to hold up to the heat. For decades it was one of the most widely used insulation products in the country, which is exactly why so many workers were exposed to it.

Kaylo has a history worth knowing, because it shapes who can claim and against whom. It was developed and first sold by Owens-Illinois, which made Kaylo from the early 1940s until 1958, when it sold the product line to Owens Corning. Owens Corning then manufactured and sold Kaylo until the early 1970s. So the same product name spans two companies and two trusts, and which one your exposure points to depends on when you worked. We sort that out for you. The Owens-Illinois Paddock asbestos trust covers the earlier Kaylo.

None of it released much fiber sitting still. Kaylo got into the air when it was worked: sawing and cutting the pipe covering to length, fitting block to a boiler, and especially tearing out old, friable (crumbly and dusty) Kaylo to reach the equipment underneath during repairs. The men doing that work breathed it directly, and so did everyone working near them, because insulation dust filled the whole space. See how asbestos pipe and block insulation caused exposure.

That's why an Owens Corning claim reaches across the trades that worked around insulation: the insulators who installed and removed it, the pipefitters and plumbers who ran the lines it covered, the boilermakers who built and repaired the boilers it wrapped, and the Navy sailors and shipyard workers who lived alongside it in engine and boiler rooms. That spread is the first sign of why an Owens Corning claim is rarely the only one.

How the Owens Corning bankruptcy created the asbestos trust, and where the company is today

By the late 1990s, asbestos lawsuits against Owens Corning were coming in faster than the company could resolve them. In 2000, it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, the kind that lets a business reorganize instead of shutting down. Filing didn't erase the claims. It moved them into a process built to handle them all at once.

That process runs on a part of the bankruptcy law written specifically for asbestos cases, Section 524(g). It lets a court set up a trust to take over a company's asbestos liability, then issue a channeling injunction, a court order that routes every asbestos claim, the ones already filed and the ones that haven't happened yet, away from the company and into the trust. From that point on, the trust pays the claims in the company's place. The trade the law strikes is straightforward: the company funds the trust up front, and in return it's protected from being sued over asbestos again.

After several years of negotiation, Owens Corning's reorganization was confirmed and the Owens Corning/Fibreboard Asbestos Personal Injury Trust was established in 2006. The company funded it with about $3.4 billion, in cash and company stock, to pay current and future claimants. That trust is what you file against today; the company itself can no longer be sued for the asbestos in its old products.

The company is still in business today, and thriving. The bankruptcy didn't shut Owens Corning down. The channeling injunction that created the trust moved its asbestos liability into the trust, which let the business reorganize and keep operating. Owens Corning is a large, successful public company today (NYSE: OC), headquartered in Toledo, Ohio, one of the best-known names in building products and insulation, with billions in annual revenue and operations around the world. That matters for two reasons. It shows that an asbestos bankruptcy didn't mean the company vanished, so the records and history behind your exposure still exist. And because the trust, not the operating company, pays these claims, filing yours doesn't take a dollar from anyone working there today, and the trust's funding was settled long ago and doesn't depend on the company's current business.

Why the Owens Corning trust pays a percentage, not the full amount

The trust pays set amounts based on your diagnosis, scaled to how serious the disease is, with mesothelioma at the top of the schedule and the non-malignant conditions like asbestosis lower down. The full breakdown is in the table near the top of this page.

How you file decides which of those amounts is within reach, because the trust offers two tracks:

• Expedited Review is the fast track. If your diagnosis and exposure fit the trust's preset criteria, the claim is paid the fixed scheduled value (the trust's set amount) for your disease level, with no negotiation and a quicker turnaround. It's the simplest path when the standard amount is the right amount.
• Individual Review is the evidence-based track. Instead of the fixed figure, the trust weighs the specifics of your case, your age, your work history, your dependents, and the strength of the exposure proof, and it can pay up to the much higher maximum value. It takes longer and asks for more, but for a serious diagnosis it's usually worth it. For mesothelioma we always do a thorough exposure-history investigation to determine whether filing Individual Review is warranted, because the gap between the scheduled and the maximum value is large enough to matter to your family.

Whichever track you file, the trust doesn't pay the full value of the claim. It pays a percentage of it, currently 4.3%, a little over four cents on each dollar of a claim's value.

That number surprises people, so here's why it's there. It's the same principle behind every bankruptcy: when a company can't cover everything it owes, the law shares what there is across everyone it harmed, so that everyone gets a fair portion instead of a lucky few collecting in full and everyone else collecting nothing. An asbestos trust has to do that across time as well, because these diseases can take thirty to fifty years to surface, so the trust has to hold back enough for the family that won't be diagnosed until 2045. The percentage is what lets the trust keep its promise to the people who haven't gotten sick yet, and it's why a trust funded with billions still pays a fraction of each claim's face value rather than the whole thing.

The percentage isn't fixed forever. The trust reviews it on a schedule and adjusts it as its funding and claim flow change, so it can move up or down over time. Most recently, on June 30, 2026, it was reduced from 4.7% to 4.3%. We work from whatever the trust is paying when your claim is filed, and we confirm it against the trust's current notice rather than any figure that might be out of date.

Is the Owens Corning trust still able to pay?

Yes. A trust that's two decades old and pays a percentage of each claim can leave people wondering whether there's anything left, so here's the picture from its most recent annual report.

• About $474 million on hand for Owens Corning claims. The trust keeps a separate Owens Corning sub-account, and at the end of 2025 it held roughly $474 million in net assets, down slightly from about $481 million a year earlier, because in 2025 its claim payments and costs ran a little ahead of what its investments earned back, which is the fund doing its job, not a warning sign.
• About $39 million paid to Owens Corning claimants in 2025. In that single year the trust paid roughly $39 million on Owens Corning claims.
• More than $3.5 billion paid to Owens Corning claimants since 2006. Over its history the trust has paid more than $3.5 billion on Owens Corning claims alone, which is more than the entire trust was originally funded with, because the fund keeps earning investment returns while it operates.

None of that means the money is unlimited, and it's exactly why the trust pays a set percentage rather than the full value of each claim: it's holding reserves against a long line of claims still to come. The percentage can move over time, which we cover just above, and a claim filed today is paid on the schedule in effect when it's processed. We track the annual reporting and can walk through the full financial picture with you when you call.

Who qualifies for an Owens Corning trust claim

A trust claim rests on two things: a qualifying asbestos diagnosis, and proof that you were exposed to Owens Corning asbestos during the period the trust covers. The diagnosis side is medical. The exposure side is where the trust's specific rules come in, and where most of our work happens.

The exposure has to fall before the end of 1982. Like most asbestos trusts, the Owens Corning trust pays on 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. For Owens Corning, the practical point is that Kaylo was in heavy use for decades before then, so most careers around it ran straight through that window, and 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, so a meso claim doesn't have to meet the higher dose threshold that applies to some other diseases. That threshold, Significant Occupational Exposure (SOE), is about five years of total asbestos exposure with at least two of those years before the 1982 cutoff. It applies to lung cancer and other cancers, and to the more serious asbestosis claims: the higher-paying severe level depends on how much lung function you've lost, measured by a breathing test (a pulmonary function test). The base asbestosis and pleural-disease levels pay their set amounts without it. SOE can add up across different employers, and it can come from working near the dust, not only from handling the material yourself.

Family members can qualify too. If an Owens Corning worker brought the dust home, a spouse who laundered the work clothes or a child in the household can file on the worker's exposure history, the same history that supports the worker's own claim. How take-home asbestos exposure works.

How the trust's site list and product identification work

The trust recognizes exposure two ways, and you only need one of them.

The first is the trust's approved site list: more than 40,000 worksites across all 50 states and the District of Columbia that it already accepts as places where Owens Corning asbestos was present. If you worked at a listed site during the covered period, that part is straightforward.

The second door matters a great deal for Kaylo, because Kaylo was simply too widely used for any list to capture every place it went. It insulated pipe and equipment in factories, power plants, refineries, ships, and commercial buildings across the country for decades, passing through distributors and contractors into worksites no central record ever tracked. So the trust also accepts product identification: proof that you worked around Owens Corning's asbestos, even at a site that never appears on the list. A coworker who remembers the insulation, a specification or purchase record, or the kind of work you did and where can establish it.

Either door shows Owens Corning asbestos was where you worked; a solid claim also shows the work put its fiber in your air. Kaylo released fiber when it was sawed, cut, fitted, and torn out, so we use the exposure record on Kaylo, together with your work history, to connect your tasks to exposure. The list or the product puts Kaylo at your site; the task evidence is what ties it to you.

That's the real reason the exposure investigation matters, and why not finding your site on a list is no reason to stop. We check the approved site list first, but for a product as common as Kaylo, the work history is often the stronger route, and documenting it is exactly the kind of reconstruction we do. You can also search our directory of asbestos exposure sites to see whether the place you worked is already documented.

How an Owens Corning 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 not suing anyone. 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 Owens Corning asbestos during the covered period. Putting that together is our job, not yours. We gather the medical records, reconstruct the work history, match it against the trust's approved site list or document the Owens Corning products you worked around, and choose the track, Expedited or Individual Review, that fits your situation. You don't need to have kept paperwork or remember product names to start.

The Owens Corning trust has been open and paying since 2006 and is still accepting claims today, so the door isn't closed. 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.

An Owens Corning claim is rarely the only one

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

A working life around insulation meant a working life around many manufacturers' asbestos. The fitter who cut Owens Corning Kaylo on one job cut another company's pipe covering on the next, scraped a third company's gaskets off a flange, and worked in rooms lagged with a fourth company's block. Owens Corning's product was rarely the only asbestos in the room, and many of the other makers went bankrupt too, each leaving its own trust.

The clearest example is Kaylo itself. Because Owens-Illinois made Kaylo until the end of 1958 and Owens Corning made it afterward, a single stretch of work around Kaylo can be two separate trust claims, one against each company, decided by when you were exposed. Exposure to Kaylo before December 31, 1958 points to the Owens-Illinois Paddock asbestos trust; exposure from 1959 on points to the Owens Corning sub-account this page describes. A worker whose career straddled that line, common for anyone who worked around this insulation through the 1950s and 1960s, can have both at once, and the two are filed and paid independently. The same work, sorted by date, becomes two recoveries instead of one. We handle that sorting for you.

Now stretch that across a whole career. The same work history that supports your Owens Corning claim usually supports a stack of others, 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 is why the thorough exposure investigation is worth so much. Each trust pays its own fraction, and most pay modestly on their own, but a work history that turns up eight trusts instead of three can change the total on a mesothelioma claim by a wide margin. We walk through a full worked example, several trusts totaled across one career, in our guide to mesothelioma trust settlement values.

Even stacked across many trusts, trust claims are still only one part of an Owens Corning recovery, and some of the other parts can be larger. The full set of channels, including the lawsuits and benefits that run alongside the trusts, is laid out in the recovery options on this page.

Sources of compensation beyond the Owens Corning trust

An Owens Corning 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 Owens Corning trust is one, and an insulation career almost always reaches several others, the makers of the pipe covering, block, gaskets, and packing on the same equipment. They review and pay independently, so they stack. How asbestos trust claims work.
• Lawsuits against solvent manufacturers. Not every asbestos maker went bankrupt. Many, especially in the gasket and packing world, are still in business and can be sued directly for 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 shipyards, power plants, refineries, and factories where Owens Corning insulation was installed can be held responsible for the conditions in their boiler and engine rooms, 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 trust and lawsuit recovery. Navy service can support VA disability benefits; civilian shipyard work can support Longshore benefits (LHWCA, the federal program for maritime and harbor workers); 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 Owens Corning 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. Owens Corning settled that question when it funded the trust, 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 manufacturers still in business and the site owners where you worked. Those defendants raise the same handful of arguments they raise in most asbestos cases, 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.