Retirement Security Law Commons^™

The Emerging Law Of Portable Retirement Benefits, Paul M. Secunda

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Lesson From Goodfellas: Why Current Illinois Consideration Based Pension Reform Proposals Still Fail, Lari A. Dierks

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.

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.

One Fund Solution And The Pension Crisis, Gordon Butler

Cleveland State Law Review

The next forty years of economic life will be dominated by one underlying theme: dealing with the retirement income security of a growing, aging and longer-lived global population. This is a "can’t run, can’t hide" problem that will affect the lives of almost every human being on the planet . . . Whether you are light in your pension account, whether you have more money than Croesus, whether you live in the well-funded Netherlands, or whether you are a put-upon unambitious young male in Japan who sees no future for himself, you cannot escape this problem.

Before you read very …

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 …

Illusory Rights Under The Arbitrary And Capricious Standard: Adding Remedial Safeguards To The Judicial Standard Of Review Beyond Erisa Denial Of Benefits Claims, Javier J. Diaz

Seton Hall Circuit Review

No abstract provided.

Disqualitifcation Of Employee Retirement Plans: The Wrong Remedy, William J. Rands

Akron Law Review

Yet Congress failed to extirpate from the tax laws the sanction of disqualifying an employee retirement plan. Not only has disqualification been described as being "draconian" and "harsh," but it has also been noted that it results in "tragedy," "penalizes the covered employees who have no part in the wrongdoing,"6 and frustrates the legislative purpose of encouraging the establishment and maintenance of employee retirement plans. The imposition of this sanction is nonsensical: the tax consequences devastate the financial security of employees whose future depends on the retirement income they will receive from their employers' plans. This article will discuss this …

Post-Norris Ambiguities: Unanswered Questions For Women And The Pension Industry, T. Timothy Ryan Jr., Paula A. Rock

Akron Law Review

On April 25, 1978, the United States Supreme Court decided Los Angeles Department of Water and Power v. Manhart in a way that was bound to have a profound effect on the pension industry. The division of opinion in the Manhart Court was indicative of the difficulty of the question presented. In Part I, this article examines the Court's findings in Manhart, as well as its conclusions in a more recent case, Arizona Governing Committee v. Norris, in which the Supreme Court extended its Manhart holding in a way bound to have an equally significant impact on pension …

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 …

Gender Discrimination - European Economic Community - European Court Of Justice Determines That A Non-Contributory Occupational Pension Scheme Should Not Discriminate On The Basis Of Sex. Barber V. Royal Exchange Assurance Group, 1990 E. Comm. Ct. J. Rep. ___, [1990] 2 Comm. Mkt. L. Rep. 513., R. Mace Flournoy

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Employers As Risks, Amy B. Monahan

Chicago-Kent Law Review

In evaluating health and retirement security in the United States, much recent work has focused on shortcomings in individual decision making. For example, in explaining why 401(k) plans are suboptimal for achieving retirement security, a significant volume of literature has catalogued the mistakes individuals make when attempting to save for retirement through such plans. This article seeks to move the discussion of suboptimal decision making in a new direction, by focusing on the impact that employer decision making has on the ability of employees to achieve health and retirement security. The article argues that employer decision making regarding whether to …

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.

Defined (Yet Uncertain) Benefit Pension Plans In America, Travis Bayer

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Despite playing a central role in many public and private employees' retirements, defined benefit pension plans are woefully underfunded. Moreover, the combination of a Baby Boomer retirement bulge and a struggling economy are putting even more pressure on defined benefit plans. This Note examines relevant background information regarding defined benefit pension plans and demographic data of the Baby Boomer generation. This Note then explores how and to what extent states and private employers have created contractual obligations through defined benefit plans and addresses what happens when those contractual obligations are breached. Finally, this Note suggests that litigation cannot provide a …

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. …

Pension And Employee Benefit Law—Employee Retirement Income Security Act—An Owner-Employee Can Qualify As A "Participant" In An Erisa Pension Plan Sponsored By His Corporation, As Long As The Plan Covers One Or More Non-Owner Employees. Yates V. Hendon, 541 U.S. 1 (2004), Quentin May

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Limitations Of Retirement Plan Law, Peter M. Van Zante

ExpressO

It is widely believed that employers determine whether or not their employees receive retirement benefits and the type and amount of any benefits that are received. This belief is mistaken. While sponsorship of a retirement plan is a voluntary choice on the part of the sponsoring employer and the sponsoring employer directly controls the type of plan and the level of benefits provided, the employer's choices on these matters are controlled by its employees' preferences for different forms of compensation. An employer must spend the funds available for employee compensation so as to provide its employees with those forms of …

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 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, …

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. …

Erisa And The Bankruptcy Code: Stepping Into Quicksand Or Something Else, Post Mackey, Maria A. Di Pippo, Gerald P. Wolf

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Compensation For Pension Benefit Losses In Unlawful Dismissal, G. England, E. Gardner

Dalhousie Law Journal

This paper describes, firstly, how the "real-world" pension benefit losses of an unlawfully dismissed employee are dictated by three main variables: the benefit structure of the plan; the legal structure of the plan; and the employee's position in the labour market. Secondly, it shows that the common law measure of damages in a wrongful dismissal action fails to compensate adequately those losses. In contrast, the measures of damages in collective agreement arbitration, and in adjudication pursuant to section 61.5 of the Canada Labour Code' create the potential for a more realistic approach to compensating the employee for his "real-world" losses. …

Fiduciary Standards As Applied Under Erisa, Rosemary B. Orr

Fordham Urban Law Journal

The Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) resulted in large changes in the laws of private pensions. However, with the use of exculpatory and indemnification provisions, ERISA has been limited in its ability to enhance the strength of fiduciary requirements for pension trustees. This comment examines the statutory language of ERISA and looks to understand judicial interpretation to look to the future of ERISA.