Law Commons^™

Fully Funded Pensions, Jonathan Barry Forman

Marquette Law Review

At retirement, workers want to have enough income to support themselves throughout their retirement years. In that regard, financial planners often suggest that retiring workers should aim to replace 70 to 80% of their annual preretirement earnings. Social Security benefits typically replace around 35% of the typical worker’s preretirement earnings, and the purpose of this Article is to show how pensions could and should be designed to replace, say, 40% of the typical worker’s preretirement earnings throughout her retirement years. In particular, because so many public and private pension plans are underfunded, this Article focuses on how to fully fund …

Protective Plan Provisions For Employer-Sponsored Employee Benefit Plans, Kathryn J. Kennedy

Marquette Benefits and Social Welfare Law Review

Federal case law has provided plan sponsors of the

Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA)

covered plans with the ability to insert plan provisions that are

more favorable to the plan sponsor rather than the plan

participant or beneficiary (so-called “protective plan provisions”).

This Article first examines what is the “plan document” for

purposes of ERISA and what protective plan provisions should

be considered for insertion into the plan document and its

related “instruments.”

Allowing States To Help Workers Safe For Retirement: Department Of Labor's Proposed Rulemaking That Provides A Safe Harbor For State Savings Programs Under Erisa, William A. Nelson

Marquette Benefits and Social Welfare Law Review

There is a “retirement crisis” in America. Contributing to

this crisis is the fact that millions of Americans do not have

access to a retirement savings plan through their employers.

States, concerned with the economic stability of their citizens,

have created laws that require private sector employers to

implement state-administered payroll deduction IRA programs

in their workplaces. Even though many states are currently

debating whether to adopt state payroll deduction programs,

this Article will focus on Oregon, Illinois, and California, which

have enacted laws along those lines.

One obstruction to wider adoption of such state measures

has been uncertainty about …

The Pbgc Wins A Case Whenever The Debtor Keeps Its Pension Plan, Israel Goldowitz, Garth Wilson, Erin Kim, Kirsten Bender

Marquette Benefits and Social Welfare Law Review

The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, the federal agency charged with insuring private-sector defined benefit pension plans, has long had a prominent role in corporate bankruptcies. PBGC focuses its effort on the continuation of pension plans, in true reorganizations and in sales of businesses. To this end, ERISA has made it more difficult for a sponsor to terminate a plan in its own economic interest. For example, a sponsor’s latitude to terminate an underfunded plan was limited to circumstances involving the sponsor’s financial distress. Likewise, the termination premium, which was added to ERISA in recent years, is an obligation that survives …

The Silliness Of Erisa: The Plan Is Not The Only Proper Party Defendant In An Erisa Benefits Claim, Donald T. Bogan

Marquette Benefits and Social Welfare Law Review

ERISA recites in § 502(d)(1) that a plan can sue and be sued as an entity. Does such a legislative pronouncement, in and of itself, establish the plan as a juristic person? Further, does Congress’s declaration that a plan can be sued suggest that no other person or entity can be held liable in an ERISA § 502(a)(1)(B) benefits claim? Relying upon ERISA § 502(d)(1), long-standing authority in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and in other circuits, holds that the plan, and only the plan, is a proper party defendant in an ERISA § 502(a)(1)(B) benefits claim. That is …