In New York, surviving spouses are protected by the right of election. But there is an unjust and avoidable flaw in those protections for the surviving spouses of New York public sector retirees: they may be left with no survivor benefits whatsoever, because the default benefit is an annuity...

The Supreme Court’s apparent holding that ERISA §502(a)(1)(B) is generally inapplicable to cases where summary documents conflict with formal plan documents bears little scrutiny. This apparent result raises at least four serious questions. First, did the Court intend to reach this broad...

In Kennedy v. Plan Administrator of the Du Pont Savings and Investment Plan (“Kennedy Decision”) the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously held that an ERISA plan, was not required to pay the participant’s death benefits to his contingent beneficiary, even though the participant's primary...

Bonus plans and unfunded excess benefit plans must generally follow domestic relations orders, i.e., those state orders relating to child support, alimony payments or marital property rights. Top-Hat Plans are unfunded pension plans maintained primarily to provide a select group of management or...

The extent, if any, to which a participant’s spouse or former spouse is entitled to the participant’s employee benefits is often an important issue in divorces and marital separations. State courts thus frequently issue domestic relations orders (“DROs”) pertaining to such benefits....

Kennedy v. DuPont Savings Plan Administrator, No. 07-636 has become even more confused. The estate of a participant (William Kennedy denoted as William) claimed to be entitled to receive William's death benefit on the ground that the designated beneficiary and his former spouse (Liv Kennedy) had...

Administrators of employee benefit plans governed by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, as amended ("ERISA"), often struggle to determine who is entitled to be paid survivor benefits. Trusts and estates attorneys often struggle to determine who, if anyone, may use state law to...

This Article discusses the interaction between ERISA and family law (i.e., domestic relations law and estates law). The Supreme Court and the US Department of Labor (“DOL”) may improve the practice of both ERISA and family law by dispelling myths that they have reinforced. First, the Court...