Law Commons^™

The Real Reason The Investor Class Hates Pensions, David H. Webber

Shorter Faculty Works

No issue in America today better illustrates the divergent interests of working Americans and the 1 percent than pension reform. Substantial empirical evidence shows that America’s favored retirement vehicle — the 401(k), recently renounced by its own inventors — is grossly inadequate and will leave tens of millions of Americans with insufficient retirement assets. And yet states and cities are busy converting traditional pensions into these failing 401(k)s or equivalents, to the great benefit of money managers and the finance class.

The Collective Fiduciary, Lauren R. Roth

Scholarly Works

Can fiduciaries be made to serve public goals? The movement under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“ACA”) towards universal access to health insurance requires us to focus on the fiduciary relationships between large organizations providing access to healthcare and the populations they serve. These relationships have become a collective undertaking instead of a direct, personal relationship.

In this Article, I introduce the concept of the collective fiduciary in response to the shift towards uniform, national goals in the realm of health insurance and healthcare. Only through a collective approach can we hold fiduciaries accountable for the welfare of …

Your Former Employer’S 401(K) Plan, Jeanne Medeiros Jd

Pension Action Center Publications

When you leave a job where you have participated in a 401(k) plan, you may have a number of different options about what to do with the money in that account. This fact sheet explains those options and offers guidance about the pros and cons of each option.

Here are some frequently asked questions answered in this face sheet:

Q. Can I leave my money in my former employer’s plan?

Q. What are my other options?

Q. If I decide to withdraw the account balance from my former employer’s plan, how do I do that, and how long should it …

Rethinking Erisa's Promise Of Income Security In A World Of 401(K) Plans, Lawrence A. Frolik

Articles

This article discusses the evolution of retirement income funds from defined benefit packages to 401(k) and IRA accounts and how the changing dynamic has reshaped the way retirees think about post-retirement income. The article outlines the mechanics of 401(k) accounts and rollover IRAs in the post-retirement period and presents questions about the ability of retirees to successfully address the complex issues relating to investment choices including, what entity they entrust their savings to, the volume and source of distributions, and long-term sufficiency planning. The article suggests that an increase in the use of annuities may help to resolve some of …

Protect Your Pension: Important Documents You Should Keep, Mia Midenjak

Pension Action Center Publications

No matter what kind of pension or retirement plan your employer offers, you should keep certain documents indefinitely to ensure that your retirement benefit is paid correctly. Based on our experience with finding lost retirement income and assisting workers and retirees to get the benefits they have earned, we recommend that you save the following information.

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 …

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.

Erisa & Uncertainty, Brendan S. Maher, Peter K. Stris

Faculty Scholarship

In the United States, retirement income and health insurance are largely provided through private promises made incident to employment. These “benefit promises” are governed by a statute called ERISA, which many healthcare and pension scholars argue is the cause of fundamental problems with our nation’s health and retirement policy. Inevitably, however, they advance narrowly tailored proposals to amend the statute. This occurs because of the widely-held view that reform should leave undisturbed the underlying core of the statute. This Article develops a theory of ERISA designed to illustrate the unavoidable need for structural reform.

Reforming Retirement Systems: Why The French Have Succeeded When Americans Have Not, Kathryn L. Moore

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

In order to understand why the American Social Security system has been so resistant to change while the retirement systems in other countries have been amended, this Article analyzes why one country, France, was able to reform its retirement system significantly in 2003. The Article begins by briefly describing the French retirement system prior to 2003. It then provides an overview of the most significant changes wrought by the reform enacted in 2003. It then analyses why, after years of inaction and failed attempts to reform the French retirement system, the government succeeded in reforming the retirement system in 2003. …

Hope We Die Before We Get Old: The Attack On Retirement, Patricia E. Dilley

UF Law Faculty Publications

The American institution of retirement has sustained numerous attacks over the last twenty years, to the extent that it may cease to exist by the time most of today's workers reach their midsixties. Professor Patricia Dilley describes how all of the components of the "three-legged stool" that represents private pensions, personal savings, and Social Security, have declined so significantly in recent years that the combination may not be able to provide support for the elderly in the future, particularly those retired seniors who are in the lower and middle classes. Changes in employment policies, the markets for retirement savings investment, …

The Best Of Times And The Worst Of Times: Lessons From Recent Reforms Of The French Retirement System, Kathryn L. Moore

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Principally because of increasing life expectancy and the fact that the baby boom generation is reaching retirement age and is followed by a much smaller generation, the American social security system is facing a long-term funding deficit. The Board of Trustees of the Federal Old-Age and Survivors and Disability Trust Funds predicts that unless corrective action is taken, social security benefits will exceed dedicated tax revenues by the year 2016, and the social security system will become insolvent, that is, unable to pay benefits in full, by the year 2038.

The United States is not alone in facing these circumstances. …

The Effects Of Partial Privatization Of Social Security Upon Private Pensions, Kathryn L. Moore

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Social Security does not provide retirement income in a vacuum. Rather, commentators often refer to our national retirement income system as a three legged stool, with Social Security representing one of the legs and employer sponsored pension plans and individual savings representing the other two legs. Because changes in one leg of the stool are likely to have a direct impact on the other two legs, policymakers must not consider Social Security changes in isolation, but should take account of their effect on employer-sponsored pensions and individual savings. This Article analyzes how one of the most popular proposals, partial privatization, …