W.R. Grace Asbestos Trust Claims

If you or someone in your family worked around W.R. Grace's Monokote fireproofing or Zonolite products, or was exposed to the vermiculite Grace mined at Libby, Montana, and later developed mesothelioma or another asbestos disease, the company left behind a trust built to pay exactly these claims.

W.R. Grace was a large chemical and building-materials company, and its asbestos came from two directions at once. It made asbestos products used across the construction industry, most prominently its Monokote spray-on fireproofing and its Zonolite line of insulating cement and acoustical plaster. And it mined vermiculite, a mineral used in insulation and soil products, at Libby, Montana, where the ore was contaminated with a particularly dangerous form of asbestos, causing one of the worst asbestos disasters in the country's history. The weight of all of it drove the company into bankruptcy, and after a long reorganization, the trust was funded with more than $3 billion to pay the people Grace's asbestos harmed. That trust has been paying mesothelioma and other asbestos claims since 2014, 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 product was a Grace product or that the vermiculite came from Libby. The trust pays on documented exposure to Grace's asbestos, 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 or lived and when, we have a place to start.

What the W.R. Grace 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 $180,000, 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 (Level I) means that level is a small flat cash-discount payment with no higher tier above it.

These are one trust's values, not your family's whole recovery. The amounts above are what a single trust, W.R. Grace's, assigns to each disease before its payment percentage comes off, and many people exposed to Grace's asbestos were exposed to other companies' asbestos too, each with its own trust or lawsuit. What the Grace 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 W.R. Grace's asbestos exposed workers and communities

Most asbestos trusts cover one company's products. W.R. Grace is different, because Grace caused harm two separate ways, and the trust was built to answer both.

The first is the product story, and it looks like the others in this field. Grace made asbestos building products used by the construction trades:

• Monokote spray-on fireproofing. This was sprayed onto the steel beams and decking of high-rise buildings to protect them from fire, and it created heavy overspray and dust as it was applied, and again whenever it was later scraped or disturbed. Grace's Monokote came in several formulations, and the distinction matters: the early ones, Monokote MK-1, MK-2, and MK-3, contained asbestos, while the later MK-4 and MK-5 did not. Exposure that supports a Grace claim comes from the earlier, asbestos-bearing versions.
• Zonolite high-temperature insulating cement. A typical asbestos cement, troweled onto hot equipment and fittings, which released fiber when it was mixed, applied, and later removed.
• Zonolite acoustical plaster. A commercial sound-control plaster, mixed and sprayed or troweled onto ceilings, sanded when dry, the same mixing-and-sanding exposure as other asbestos plasters.
  See how asbestos spray fireproofing caused exposure.

The second story is different from anything else in this field. Grace mined the asbestos itself, at Libby, Montana, and the harm there reached an entire community, not just workers. The vermiculite Grace mined at Libby was laced with a rare and especially dangerous asbestos, and over decades it contaminated the mine, the town, and the homes around it. The trust has a distinct set of rules for Libby exposure, and because the story is so different from ordinary product exposure, it's worth understanding on its own.

One more Grace product deserves a word, because so many people have it in their homes without knowing: Zonolite Attic Insulation, the loose, pebbly vermiculite poured into millions of attics, much of it made from the contaminated Libby ore. The Grace bankruptcy created a separate fund for it, the ZAI Trust, but it's important to understand what that fund does and doesn't do. It reimburses homeowners for part of the cost of removing or containing the material, and it pays nothing for asbestos illness. So if Zonolite in the attic is the concern, that's the property fund. But if exposure to it caused mesothelioma or another asbestos disease, the injury claim belongs with the personal injury trust this page describes, on the product or Libby exposure rules above, and that's the claim we handle.

That two-sided history, products and Libby, is the first sign of why a Grace claim, like the others, is rarely the only one, and the recovery sections below lay out the rest.

How the W.R. Grace bankruptcy created the asbestos trust

By 2001, W.R. Grace faced asbestos claims, from its products and from Libby both, on a scale it could not resolve one lawsuit at a time. In April of that year 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.

This bankruptcy took an unusually long time, more than a decade of litigation, before the plan finally became effective in early 2014 and the trust began paying claims. When it was funded, it was funded heavily: more than $3 billion to pay current and future claimants, across both the product claims and the Libby claims. That trust is what you file against today; the company itself can no longer be sued for the asbestos in its old products or its Libby operations.

The company is still in business today. The bankruptcy didn't shut Grace down. The channeling injunction that created the trust moved its asbestos liability into the trust, which let the business reorganize and keep operating. W.R. Grace emerged from bankruptcy in 2014 and continues today as a specialty chemicals company. 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 W.R. Grace 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 30.1%, just over thirty 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. Grace funded the trust with more than $3 billion, but if it paid every mesothelioma claim its full top-tier value of $450,000, that entire fund would be gone after about 6,900 people, and everyone after them would get nothing. Paying a set fraction of each claim is what lets the trust treat the hundreds of thousands of people who've already come, and still have money for the ones who haven't.

For W.R. Grace the figure is a strong one, and it's been stable: 30.1%, and it isn't currently under reconsideration, which means we can tell you with real confidence what a claim is likely to pay. It's among the higher payment percentages in the asbestos trust system, well above what many trusts pay. The percentage isn't frozen forever, the trust still reviews it over time, so we work from whatever it's paying when your claim is filed and confirm it against the trust's current notice rather than any figure that might be out of date.

Is the W.R. Grace trust still able to pay?

Yes. This is one of the largest asbestos trusts in the country, so for anyone worried whether there's money left, the most recent annual report is reassuring.

• About $1.83 billion on hand. At the end of 2025 the trust held roughly $1.83 billion in net assets, the largest balance of any asbestos trust we work with. It drew down only slightly over the year, by about $10 million, which is the fund doing its job, paying claims while its investments nearly kept pace.
• About $188 million paid to claimants in 2025. In that single year the trust paid out roughly $188 million across tens of thousands of claims, one of the highest annual payouts of any asbestos trust.
• More than $2.7 billion paid since 2014. In the years since it began paying claims, the trust has already paid more than $2.7 billion to asbestos victims, and it still holds nearly twice that much.

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, very well funded, and paying right now, at one of the higher percentages in the system, 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 W.R. Grace trust claim

A trust claim rests on two things: a qualifying asbestos diagnosis, and proof of what the trust calls Grace Exposure. The diagnosis side is medical. The exposure side has two separate doors, reflecting Grace's two kinds of asbestos, and you only need one.

Door one: exposure to Grace's asbestos products, before the end of 1982. Like most asbestos trusts, this door covers meaningful exposure to a Grace asbestos product, the asbestos-bearing Monokote fireproofing, Zonolite cement, Zonolite acoustical plaster, and the rest, from before December 31, 1982. Most construction-trades careers around these products ran straight through that window.

Door two: exposure to the Libby vermiculite, with no 1982 cutoff. This is the door that sets Grace apart. Exposure to the asbestos, winchite, or contaminated vermiculite from Grace's Libby, Montana operations qualifies without the 1982 cutoff that limits the product door, reaching exposure up to the trust's creation. It covers people exposed in Lincoln County, Montana, where the mining contaminated the community, and people exposed to the raw Libby ore as it was transported or handled before processing. As explained above, this door is specific to Grace's Libby operations, not a general rule for environmental asbestos.

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 and pleural-disease levels; the base 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 Grace's asbestos dust home, or if a household in Libby was exposed through a family member who worked at the mine, a spouse who laundered the work clothes or a child in the household can file on that exposure history. The take-home thread runs especially deep at Libby, where whole families, not just workers, were exposed. How take-home asbestos exposure works.

How the trust's site list and product identification work

The trust recognizes product exposure two ways, and you only need one of them. The first is its approved site list: more than 4,000 worksites, across all 50 states and DC, that the trust already accepts as places Grace 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 Grace product, even at a site the list never names. Grace's fireproofing and Zonolite products went into a great many buildings, often used by tradesmen who never noted the brand, so 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. The Libby exposure rules work differently, resting on where and when a person lived or worked in relation to Grace's Montana operations rather than on a national site list.

How a W.R. Grace 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 Grace Exposure, whether that's to a Grace product or to the Libby vermiculite. Putting that together is our job, not yours. We gather the medical records, reconstruct the history, match it against the trust's approved site list, the Grace products you worked around, or your connection to Libby, 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 W.R. Grace trust has been open and paying since 2014 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 W.R. Grace claim is rarely the only one

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

For exposure to Grace's building products, this is the usual picture. A career in the construction trades meant a career around many manufacturers' asbestos, the fireproofing from one maker, the cement and plaster from another, the insulation other trades were installing in the same building. Many of those companies went bankrupt too, and each one left its own trust, so the same work history that supports your Grace claim usually supports a stack of others. Because each trust reviews and pays independently, the claims don't compete; they add up. How asbestos trust claims work.

For Libby exposure the picture can be different. Someone whose asbestos exposure came primarily from Grace's Libby operations may have Grace as their main or only product source, so the trust portfolio is sometimes smaller. But even then, other channels can apply, and the Grace claim itself, at one of the higher payment percentages in the system, carries real weight on its own.

This is why the thorough exposure investigation is worth so much. Each trust pays its own fraction, and a work history that turns up several trusts can change the total on a mesothelioma claim by a wide margin. We walk through a full worked example, several trusts totaled across one history, in our guide to mesothelioma trust settlement values.

Even apart from the trusts, a Grace claim is often only one part of a 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 W.R. Grace trust

A W.R. Grace 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 Grace trust is one, and for product exposure a construction career almost always reaches several others, the makers of the 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 sites where Grace 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; 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. People affected by the Libby contamination may also have access to dedicated federal health resources established for that community, which we can help you identify. How asbestos disability and benefit claims work.

Your W.R. Grace 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. Grace 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 exposure than the one your loved one actually had, and the evidence answers it.