Elder Law Commons^™

Pension De-Risking, Paul M. Secunda, Brendan S. Maher

Paul M. Secunda

The United States is facing a retirement crisis, in significant part because defined benefit pension plans have been replaced by defined contribution retirement plans that, whatever their theoretical merit, have left significant numbers of workers unprepared for retirement. A troubling example of the continuing movement away from defined benefit plans is a new phenomenon euphemistically called “pension de-risking.”

Recent years have been marked by high-profile companies engaging in various actions designed to reduce the company’s exposure to pension funding risk (hence the term “pension de-risking”). Some de-risking strategies convert a federally-guaranteed pension into a more risky private annuity. Other ...

Getting The Most Out Of Your 401(K), Emily G. Brown Jd, Jeanne Medeiros Jd

Pension Action Center Publications

Planning for your retirement is an active and ongoing endeavor. It requires a certain amount of diligence and knowledge to ensure you have an adequate amount of financial stability at retirement. In order to safeguard your economic security, it is important to know if you are getting the most out of your 401(k) retirement savings account. This factsheet provides basic information about enrolling in a 401(k) retirement savings account and important items to keep in mind once you are enrolled.

Employing Disability: Deconstructing Insufficient Protections For "Non-Mainstream" Disabilities, Maia Abbas

Western Journal of Legal Studies

This paper surveys leading and recent case law on disability with a specific focus on “non-mainstream” disabilities. Such disabilities are categorized according to the difficulty with which they can be medically diagnosed, their transient nature, and their fluctuations in severity. Jurisprudence on the duty to accommodate has been developed through what law professor Judith Mosoff classifies as “mainstream” disabilities. That is, disabilities that are better understood by employers and medical professionals, and to which the duty to accommodate more easily applies. In contrast, “non-mainstream” disabilities challenge the conventional understanding of the duty to accommodate. Standard accommodation practices do not necessarily ...

Selling Hospice, Sam Halabi

Sam Halabi

Americans are increasingly turning to hospice services to provide them with medical care, pain management, and emotional support at the end of life. The increase in the rates of hospice utilization is explained by a number of factors including a “hospice movement” dating to the 1970s which emphasized hospice as a tool to promote dignity for the terminally ill; coverage of hospice services by Medicare beginning in 1983; and, the market for hospice services provision, sustained almost entirely by governmental reimbursement. On the one hand, the growing acceptance of hospice may be seen as a sign of trends giving substance ...

Understanding The Specialized Language Of Retirement Plans, Emily G. Brown Jd, Jeanne Medeiros Jd

Pension Action Center Publications

Whether you are a participant in a defined benefit plan or a defined contribution plan, the realm of pension benefits can be tricky and confusing to navigate. Some of the terminology used might be unfamiliar to the average person. This glossary of common terms associated with retirement plans is meant to serve as a helpful resource for plan participants.

Understanding The Differences Between Defined Benefit Pension And Defined Contribution, Emily G. Brown Jd, Jeanne Medeiros Jd

Pension Action Center Publications

In recent years, more and more employers are offering employees defined contribution plans instead of defined benefit plans. Although, there has been a shift away from the defined benefit pension plan, it is important for employees to understand the difference and value of both pension plans.

Each type of pension plan has both advantages and disadvantages. What may appear as an advantage to one person might seem to be a disadvantage to another person. For example, a person who spends all or most of her career with a single employer will have very different concerns from someone who changes jobs ...

Guarding The Golden Years: How Public Guardianship For Elders Can Help States Meet The Mandates Of Olmstead, Eleanor B. Cashmore

Boston College Law Review

The aging American population will quickly lead to a greater demand for long-term care and services for people who are unable to care for themselves. Some older adults may require other individuals to make informed decisions on their behalf. State guardianship programs must confront the tension of providing protections for people who are incapacitated while respecting their autonomy, particularly when making decisions involving a person’s residence. When elderly adults wish to stay in their communities and are capable of doing so, a lack of proper support may be a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (“ADA ...

Subminimum Or Subpar? A Note In Favor Of Repealing The Fair Labor Standards Act's Subminimum Wage Program, Melia Preedy

Seattle University Law Review

This Note argues for the repeal of Section 14(c) of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which continues to perpetuate a system allowing employers to pay less than minimum, or “subminimum,” wage to certain employees with disabilities. The Section 14(c) program is a relic of policy leftover from the 1930s and does not help the disabled community, but rather rests on the presumption that persons with disabilities never progress. In light of recent House Resolution 3086, Congress went against the current trend of encouraging maximum independence and equal opportunities for persons with disabilities and instead upheld the subminimum ...

The Troubled State Of America's Nursing Homes, Albert Moran

Albert Moran

Even the most cursory search of news coverage involving nursing homes reveals that horror stories are not difficult to come by. Although the grisly details of each individual horror story vary, most of them share the same general story line—through some combination of gross negligence and profound systemic failure, elderly citizens can experience disturbing conditions in nursing homes that result in suffering and sometimes death. While egregious stories make local news headlines every so often and prompt a brief firestorm of public criticism, the everyday reality of nursing homes is much less sensationalized, and arguably even more sobering. Statistics ...

Litigating For The Future Of Public Pensions, Paul M. Secunda

Paul M. Secunda

Public pensions are horribly unfunded, millions of public employees are being forced to make greater contributions to their pensions, retirees are being forced to take benefit cuts, retirement ages and service requirements are being increased, and the list goes on and on. These alarming developments involve all level of American government, from the recent move to require new federal employees to contribute more to their pensions, to the significant underfunding of state and local public pension funds across the country, to the sad spectacle of the Detroit municipal bankruptcy where the plight of public pensions plays a leading role in ...

Multiple Myopias, Multiple Selves, And The Under-Saving Problem, Daniel Shaviro

New York University Law and Economics Working Papers

In both public policy debate and the academic literature, there is widespread, though not universal, agreement that millions of Americans are saving too little for their own retirements. If this is true, we could potentially increase such individuals’ welfare through the adoption of policies that resulted in their saving more. A key dilemma, however, is that, unless one understands why people are under-saving, it is hard to evaluate the likely responses to or merits of a given policy.

Possible explanations for systematic under-saving include at least the following: (1) naïve myopia, (2) sophisticated or self-aware myopia, (3) procrastination, or putting ...

Navigating A Post-Windsor World: The Promise And Limits Of Marriage Equality, Nancy J. Knauer

Nancy J. Knauer

When the 2013 landmark decision in U.S. v. Windsor invalidated part of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), it was hailed as a landmark civil rights victory, but its implementation has been far from seamless. The federal government has not applied a uniform rule for marriage recognition, applying a state-of-domicile rule for some purposes (Social Security) and a broader state-of-celebration rule for others (e.g., federal tax matters). Moreover, Windsor did not directly address the state-level marriage prohibitions that remain in place in the majority of states. As a result, the United States continues to be a patchwork of ...

In Re Allers: A Display Of Progress, Not Perfection, In The Guardianship System, Melanie Rosen

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Financial Security Scorecard: A State-By-State Analysis Of Economic Pressures Facing Future Retirees, Christian Weller, Nari Rhee, Carolyn Arcand

Public Policy and Public Affairs Faculty Publication Series

As Americans increasingly worry about their retirement prospects, states play an important and growing role in retirement security policy. States already manage long-term care programs for the elderly through Medicaid. Concerned about the impact of future elder poverty on state and local budgets and their local economies, a number of states are exploring the creation of low-cost and low-risk retirement savings plans for private sector workers who lack access to pensions or 401(k)s on the job. Some states have developed programs to help older workers find work.

This report presents the Financial Security Scorecard, designed to inform state-level ...

Complex Decision-Making And Cognitive Aging Call For Enhanced Protection Of Seniors Contemplating Reverse Mortgages, 46 Ariz. St. L.J. 299 (2014), Debra Pogrund Stark, Jessica M. Choplin, Joseph Mikels, Amber Schonbrun Mcdonnell

Faculty Scholarship

This article analyzes the factors that affect the effectiveness of the current rules and counseling protocol in enabling seniors to make well-informed decisions on whether to enter into a proposed reverse mortgage in light of the cognitive barriers that consumers in general, and seniors in particular, face. The article then proposes further changes to these rules and the counseling protocol to better enable seniors to determine whether entering into reverse mortgages is in their best interest in light of their specific financial situations and goals. Section I provides an overview of the current status of the law relating to reverse ...

Unfulfilled Promise: Mental Disability Voting Rights And The Halving Of Hava’S Potential, Benjamin O. Hoerner

Benjamin O Hoerner

In 2012, the heated presidential election between President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney reanimated the debate surrounding the voting rights of mentally disabled citizens in the United States. A decade earlier, in October 2002, President George W. Bush signed into law the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA), aiming to protect the voting rights of the country’s disabled population. At the time of its enactment, legislators and commentators lauded HAVA as “the most important voting rights bill since the passing of the Voting Rights Act in 1965.” However, since its passage, HAVA has been subjected to a flurry ...

Tontine Pensions: A Solution To The State And Local Pension Underfunding Crisis, Jonathan B. Forman, Michael J. Sabin

Jonathan B. Forman

Tontines are investment vehicles that can be used to provide retirement income. Basically, a tontine is a financial product that combines features of an annuity and a lottery. In a simple tontine, a group of investors pool their money together to buy a portfolio of investments, and, as investors die, their shares are forfeited, with the entire fund going to the last surviving investor. Over the years, this last-survivor-takes-all approach has made for some great fiction. For example, on the television show “Mash,” Colonel Sherman T. Potter, as the last survivor of his World War I unit, got to open ...

We'll Always Have Shady Pines: Surrogate Decision-Making Tools For Preserving Sexual Autonomy In Elderly Nursing Home Residents, Elizabeth Hill

William & Mary Journal of Women and the Law

No abstract provided.

Conceptualizing Capacity: Interpreting Canada’S Qualified Ratification Of Article 12 Of The Un Disability Rights Convention, Nicholas Caivano

Western Journal of Legal Studies

During the negotiations leading up to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), States Parties vigorously debated the scope of Article 12, which establishes legal capacity for persons with disabilities “on an equal basis with others in all aspects of life.” The ambiguity of Article 12 has led to many interpretations that have been the subject of debate among human rights activists and academics. Developments in the jurisprudence and legislative reforms across several jurisdictions indicate that governments and courts have begun to grapple with what recognizing the right to legal capacity for persons with disabilities ...

La Pensión Familiar En Colombia: ¿Una Solución Al Déficit Pensional Colombiano?, Fernando Castillo Cadena, Ana María Muñoz Segura

Fernando Castillo Cadena

Colombia enacted the “family old-age pension” through Law 1580/12. This pension is not one of exceptional type, which is granted to certain beneficiaries: it is one that tries to expand the coverage of the pension system in a novel way. Thus, the right to a pension no longer will be a product of regular contributions or savings made on an individual basis, but one that will correspond to the sum of efforts made by the couple that makes up a family group. So, in the event that an affiliate not eligible to obtain an old-age pension on an individual ...