United States Gypsum Asbestos Trust Claims

If you or someone in your family worked with U.S. Gypsum's asbestos plasters or texture finishes, including Red Top plaster, and later developed mesothelioma or another asbestos disease, the company left behind a trust built to pay exactly these claims.

United States Gypsum, the maker behind the Sheetrock name, was one of the largest building-materials companies in the country, and for decades a number of its products were made with asbestos: its Red Top brand plasters, its Hi-Lite and Audicote acoustical plasters, and texture finishes like Imperial QT and USG Superhard. These were products the building trades mixed, troweled, sanded, and swept up by hand, on construction sites in every state. The weight of the resulting asbestos sickness drove the company into bankruptcy in 2001, and its reorganization funded a trust with about $3.95 billion to pay the people its products harmed. That 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 plaster was a U.S. Gypsum product or remember the brand name. The trust pays on documented exposure to U.S. Gypsum 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 U.S. Gypsum trust pays by disease level

Mesothelioma sits at the top of the trust's schedule, at Level VIII. Its scheduled value (the trust's preset amount) is $155,000, but its maximum value runs to $450,000, and 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 (Levels III, II, and I) means those levels are paid a single set amount with no higher tier above them.

These are one trust's values, not your family's whole recovery. The amounts above are what a single trust, U.S. Gypsum's, assigns to each disease before its payment percentage comes off, and almost everyone exposed to U.S. Gypsum products was exposed to other companies' asbestos too, each with its own trust or lawsuit. What the U.S. Gypsum 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 U.S. Gypsum's asbestos plasters and finishes exposed workers

Most of the trusts in this field cover insulation that was cut and torn off hot pipe. U.S. Gypsum is different. Its asbestos reached workers through the wall and ceiling trades, in the plasters and finishes that went onto the inside of nearly every kind of building.

For decades, a number of U.S. Gypsum products carried asbestos: its Red Top brand plasters, its Hi-Lite and Audicote acoustical (sound-dampening) plasters, and texture finishes like Imperial QT and USG Superhard. These came as dry powder in bags, and the exposure was built into how they were used. A plasterer or finisher cut open the bag and poured the powder, mixed it with water by hand or with a paddle, and that mixing raised a cloud of dry asbestos dust before a drop of water hit it. The same happened in reverse at the end: once the plaster or texture had dried on the wall or ceiling, sanding it smooth, and sweeping up the bags and the fallen material, sent the dust back into the air.

It was indoor work, often in rooms not yet ventilated, and it was repeated all day, which is how a plasterer or drywall finisher built up real exposure over a career. The workers doing it breathed it directly, and so did the other trades sharing the same unfinished rooms. See how asbestos joint compound and wall products caused exposure.

That's why a U.S. Gypsum claim reaches across the building trades: the plasterers and drywall finishers who mixed and sanded the products, the construction workers on the same sites, and the painters and other finish trades who worked in the dust they raised. That spread is the first sign of why a U.S. Gypsum claim is rarely the only one.

How the U.S. Gypsum bankruptcy created the asbestos trust

By 2001, U.S. Gypsum's parent, USG Corporation, faced a flood of asbestos lawsuits it could not resolve one at a time, and that June it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, the kind that lets a business reorganize instead of shutting down. What made this filing notable is that the company was otherwise healthy; it filed because of asbestos, not because the business was failing. 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.

USG's plan of reorganization was confirmed in 2006, and the United States Gypsum Asbestos Personal Injury Settlement Trust was established that year. The company funded it heavily, with about $3.95 billion, 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 U.S. Gypsum down. Because the company was financially sound to begin with, the asbestos filing let it move that liability into the trust and keep operating, and it remains one of the best-known names in building materials as the maker of Sheetrock, now part of the Knauf group of companies. 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.

Why the U.S. Gypsum 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 10%, ten 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. U.S. Gypsum funded the trust with about $3.95 billion, but if it paid every mesothelioma claim its full top-tier value of $450,000, that entire fund would be gone after about 8,800 people, and everyone after them, of every disease, would get nothing. Paying a set fraction of each claim is what has let the trust compensate hundreds of thousands of families and still be open and paying today.

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 11% to 10%. 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 U.S. Gypsum 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 $830 million on hand, and it grew in 2025. At the end of 2025 the trust held roughly $830 million in net assets, up from about $817 million a year earlier. It earned more from its investments than it paid out, so the fund grew over the year rather than shrinking.
• About $60 million paid to claimants in 2025. In that single year the trust paid out roughly $60 million across thousands of claims.
• More than $4.2 billion paid since 2007. Over its history the trust has paid more than $4.2 billion to asbestos claimants, which is more than it 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. But the trust is open, funded, growing, and paying right now, and a claim filed today is paid on the current schedule. We track the annual reporting and can walk through the full financial picture with you when you call.

Who qualifies for a U.S. Gypsum trust claim

A trust claim rests on two things: a qualifying asbestos diagnosis, and proof that you were exposed to U.S. Gypsum 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 U.S. Gypsum 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 U.S. Gypsum, the practical point is that most building-trades careers around these products 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, 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 a worker brought U.S. Gypsum 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 its approved site list: more than 2,300 worksites, in dozens of states across the country, that the trust already accepts as places U.S. Gypsum asbestos was present. If you worked at a listed site during the covered period, establishing exposure is straightforward. The second is product identification: proof that you worked around a U.S. Gypsum product, even at a site the list never names. Because these plasters and finishes went into so many ordinary buildings, often by tradesmen who never noted the brand, the product route matters, and a coworker's account, a purchase or specification record, or the kind of work you did and where can establish it. Not finding your site on the list is a reason to look closer, not to give up. You can also search our directory of asbestos exposure sites to see whether the place you worked is already documented.

A note on A.P. Green claims

The U.S. Gypsum trust also handles certain claims involving A.P. Green, a maker of refractory (heat-resistant) products, but only for exposure tied to conduct before January 2, 1968. A.P. Green has its own separate trust that covers claims outside that early window. If your exposure involved A.P. Green products, the date is what decides which trust the claim belongs to, and we sort that out for you. The A.P. Green asbestos trust handles the A.P. Green claims this trust doesn't.

How a U.S. Gypsum 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 U.S. Gypsum 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 U.S. Gypsum 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 U.S. Gypsum 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.

A U.S. Gypsum claim is rarely the only one

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

A career in the building trades meant a career around many manufacturers' asbestos, not just U.S. Gypsum's. The plaster and texture from one maker, the joint compound from another, the acoustical products from a third, the insulation the other trades were installing in the same building, all of it was in the air on a working construction site, and a plasterer or finisher moved through years of those sites. Many of the companies that made those products went bankrupt too, and each one left its own trust.

So the same work history that supports your U.S. Gypsum 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 a U.S. Gypsum 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 U.S. Gypsum trust

A U.S. Gypsum 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 U.S. Gypsum trust is one, and a building-trades career almost always reaches several others, the makers of the joint compound, plaster, insulation, and other products on the same sites. They review and pay independently, so they stack. How asbestos trust claims work.
• Lawsuits against solvent manufacturers. Not every asbestos maker went bankrupt. Some 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 general contractors and building owners who controlled the construction sites where these products were used 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 trust and lawsuit recovery. A veteran's service can support VA disability benefits; construction work at a federal facility can support FECA benefits (the Federal Employees' Compensation Act, the program for federal civilian workers); and Social Security disability is available to anyone whose illness stops them from working. How asbestos disability and benefit claims work.

Your U.S. Gypsum 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. U.S. Gypsum 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.