Retirement Security Law Commons^™

Summary Of Mass State Pension Reform Law Chapter 176 Of The Acts Of 2011, Ellen A. Bruce

Pension Action Center Publications

Massachusetts passed significant changes to its public pension system meant to create cost savings for the state and to encourage employees to work longer. Most of the changes apply only to people hired after April 2, 2012. This summarizes the most important changes.

An Overview Of The U.S. Retirement Income Security System And The Principles And Values It Reflects, Kathryn L. Moore

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This article is designed to provide an overview of the U.S. retirement income security system from a comparative law perspective. Like many countries, the U.S. has a three tier pension or retirement income system, with the three tiers consisting of (1) Social Security, (2) employment-based pensions, and (3) individual savings. Thus, superficially, the U.S. retirement income security system resembles that of many around the world. Yet, in other ways, such as its focus on individual rights and responsibility, the U.S. system is unique.

The article begins by discussing the nine guiding principles of the U.S. Social Security system as identified …

Combating Moral Hazard: The Case For Rationalizing Public Employee Benefits, Maria O'Brien

Faculty Scholarship

The current crisis in public employee benefits is a fairly conventional moral hazard story about overly generous promises made by both private sector employers and politicians spending public dollars. The private sector, forced by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) in 1993 to confront the true cost of promises made to future retirees, dealt with the newly discovered debt in a number of ways, including the termination of defined benefit plans which were quickly replaced by defined contribution plans. The public sector was also forced to confront its own largesse with the implementation of GASB 45 which focused careful attention …

Protecting Your Retirement Savings From Potential Creditors, Pension Action Center, Gerontology Institute, University Of Massachusetts Boston

Pension Action Center Publications

State and federal laws provide strong protections to New England residents to shield their retirement savings from creditors. The particular protections available depend on whether you have filed for bankruptcy, how your retirement savings are kept, and where you live.

Fun With Numbers: Disclosing Risk To Individual Investors, Christian A. Weller

Gerontology Institute Publications

This paper discusses the need for better information on investment risks. The information should be relevant, concise, and accessible to individual investors. More and better information on factors that are likely to influence an investment’s performance and investors’ decisions should eventually lead to better investment decisions – more savings and higher retirement incomes. This paper presents a number of ways to disclose risk to individual investors. There are three numerical and three visual representations to risk. The discussion centers on the pros and cons of each risk representation. All risk descriptions show relevant information, are concise, and more or less …

A Primer On The History And Proper Drafting Of Qualified Domestic-Relations Orders, Terrence Cain

Faculty Scholarship

The divorce rate in the United States is slightly more than one-half the marriage rate. Divorce is a fact of life in this country, and will likely be so for the foreseeable future. On August 23, 1984, the divorce lawyer’s job got more complicated when Congress created the Qualified Domestic Relations Order ("QDRO") as part of some significant amendments to ERISA. QDROs are necessary because before those 1984 ERISA amendments, a lot of divorced persons discovered that they could be deprived of their marital or community property interest in their former spouses' retirement plans. For most divorcing couples, the two …

Massachusetts State Public Worker Retirees: How Are They Doing?, Ellen A. Bruce, Lauren A. Martin

Gerontology Institute Publications

Although much has been made of the Massachusetts State Retirement System’s funding and abuses, little has been written about the benefits it provides. A retirement system should be judged first on whether it meets its goal of providing for workers in retirement.