WHEN Lyn Jacobs, wife of James Jacobs, returned home on Wednesday she knew something was wrong. For almost the first time in more than 20 years of marriage her husband had made the bed.

Later that day the police found Jacobs’s body in the grounds of the former Nottinghamshire vicarage that had been the family home for 17 years. It is believed that he took his own life.

For more than two decades Jacobs had worked for Courts, the furniture retailer. He was a proud and successful man who had risen through the ranks to become a director of the group’s overseas business.

A former master of the Worshipful Company of Furniture Makers, he had, until recently, been looking forward to a well-earned, comfortable retirement.

But like hundreds of other long-serving Courts employees, Jacobs faced an uncertain future since the collapse of the retail group late last year.

The group’s pension fund has a £14m deficit and members had been warned that “pension benefits will have to be significantly reduced”.

Friends and family believe that the stress drove Jacobs to take his own life.

“For some reason he felt ashamed that he would be unable to provide for his family,” said Ged Dempsey, a friend and founder of the Courts Action Group, which is fighting for the company’s pensioners.

Jacobs was also angered that a member of the Cohen family, the founders of Courts, had transfered millions of pounds out of the pension scheme just months before the firm collapsed. “For decades James Jacobs had been totaly loyal to the Cohens. He felt completely betrayed and let down,” said Dempsey.

With all the talk of billion-pound deficits, the true cost of the pensions crisis is often forgotten. Jacobs’s untimely death is a reminder to us all.

Recent estimates suggest that 60,000 people who have paid into pension schemes throughout their working lives will receive derisory pensions, and in some cases nothing at all.

The list of pension funds that have collapsed, or stand on the brink of collapse, is now so long that the Department for Work and Pensions, the Pensions Regulator and the Pensions Ombudsman have given up counting. With 36,000 members, the Turner & Newall pension fund is one of the largest known to be teetering on the brink of collapse.

In April, the Pension Protection Fund (PPF), which will pay pension benefits to workers who lose them when their companies collapse, will come into being. But many experts already doubt whether the new body will be able to cope.

Courts pensioners may be some of the first to benefit from the PPF. This month the Courts Action Group will meet Stephen Ross, the newly appointed trustee of the Courts pension fund.

It was a meeting that Jacobs, an active member of the Courts Action Group, had been due to go to. “He confirmed on Monday that he had planned to attend,” said Dempsey. “He was nervous about the meeting. He thought it was the last chance. He just wanted something solid to hang on to.”

The Courts pensioners have been particuarly angered by The Sunday Times revelation in December that Howard Cohen, a former director and pension-fund trustee, transfered £3.9m from the company’s pension fund into a personal scheme just months before the furniture retailer collapsed into administration.

Although Cohen was legally entitled to transfer the £3.9m, pension experts believe the trustees of the scheme should have used powers that allow them to reduce individual transfers if a scheme is underfunded.

Dempsey believes that there are numerous unanswered questions surrounding the transfer.

“We need to make sure that there were no irregularities or breaches of the rules that disadvantaged other members of the scheme,” said Dempsey, who also plans to ask the pensions ombudsman to investigate.

The Courts pensioners want answers. “We’re determined to get to the truth, if only for James and his family,” said Dempsey.

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