Retirement Security Law Commons^™

Protect Your Retirement Income: Documents To Keep And Questions To Ask, Pension Action Center, Gerontology Institute, University Of Massachusetts Boston

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 you receive the retirement benefits you have earned.

This fact sheet was produced as part of the Pension Action Center’s investor education program, made possible thanks to a grant from the Investor Protection Trust, a nonprofit organization devoted to investor education, and support from the Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Illinois Secure Choice Savings Program Act (Passed Jan. 4, 2015), Emily G. Brown Jd, Ellen Bruce Jd

Pension Action Center Publications

The Illinois Secure Choice Savings Program Act, passed on January 4, 2015, creates an automatic enrollment payroll deduction IRA. The purpose of the program is to promote increased retirement savings participation for employees in the private sector. This fact sheet answers some basic questions about how this new program will affect workers and their employers in Illinois.

Pension Action Center: Protecting Your Retirement, Louise Cataldo, Michele Tolson

Office of Community Partnerships Posters

The Pension Action Center (PAC) is a one-of-a-kind organization serving New England and Illinois that touches the lives of thousands of low- moderate income people, who often have nowhere else to turn when they need help understanding and obtaining their retirement benefits.

Hardship Withdrawals And Loans: Some Words Of Caution, Emily G. Brown Jd, Jeanne Medeiros Jd, Ellen Bruce Jd

Pension Action Center Publications

As defined benefit pension plans become more and more rare, the responsibility of saving for retirement falls increasingly on individuals. Many studies have been published about the average or median balances in retirement savings accounts and virtually all of them have reached the same conclusion - most Americans aren’t saving enough money to last them through their retirement years.

In this fact sheet we will take a look at one of the factors that contributes to this problem, that is, the availability of loans and hardship withdrawals from 401(k) retirement accounts, which can lead to lower account balances overall. Sometimes, …

The Separation Of Intelligence And Control: Retirement Savings And The Limits Of Soft Paternalism, Jacob Hale Russell

William & Mary Business Law Review

“Soft paternalism” is in vogue among academics and lawmakers, but too much is being asked of it. This Article studies soft paternalist techniques—including nudging and disclosure—which have been used in the employersponsored retirement system. Defined-contribution retirement plans represent an ideal test case for libertarian paternalism: there has been extensive experimentation, and nudge advocates have often held up such plans as successes. In particular, this Article focuses on investment allocation decisions in retirement portfolios, and suggests that we should be skeptical of the ability of soft paternalism to improve those decisions. When a domain is rife with conflicts of interest—as in …

Who’S Afraid Of Good Governance? State Fiscal Crises, Public Pension Underfunding, And The Resistance To Governance Reform, Thomas J. Fitzpatrick Iv, Amy B. Monahan

Florida Law Review

Much attention has been paid to the significant underfunding of many state and local employee pension plans, as well as to efforts by states and cities to alleviate that underfunding by modifying the benefits provided to workers. Yet relatively little attention has been paid to the systemic causes of such financial distress—such as chronic underfunding that shifts financial burdens to future taxpayers, and governance rules that may reduce the likelihood that a plan’s trustees will make optimal investment decisions. This Article presents the results of a qualitative study of the funding and governance provisions of twelve public pension plans that …

Eliminating Arbitrary Age Descrimination In 401(K) And Pension Plan Eligibility Requirements: A Simple Fix To Encourage Younger Workers To Save For Retirement, Andrew J. Clopton

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform Caveat

Current federal law allows companies to exclude their youngest workers from participating in 401(k) and other pension plans. Public policy should encourage young workers to contribute to retirement as early as practicable, rather than impose obstacles to saving. Workers who begin saving even a few years earlier improve their retirement security and reduce the likelihood they will be dependent on the government later in life. While “age discrimination” is conventionally thought of as the mistreatment of older workers, this concept applies equally to employees who are differentiated based solely on their young age. Thus, Congress should amend the Internal Revenue …

Planning Past Pensions, Julie Roin

Loyola University Chicago Law Journal

Evidence of state and local government dysfunction surfaces in many areas. One is the operation of employee pension plans. Free from the strictures of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (“ERISA”), some state governments failed to adequately fund their pension promises. With the imminent retirement of the baby boom generation, these states are facing what appear to be insurmountable pension debts. Illinois is one of the worst hit states, with grossly underfunded pension plans, a state constitutional prohibition on reducing pension benefits, and a sizable non-pension-related budget deficit. Illinois courts will likely strike down recently passed pension “reforms.” There are …

Overvaluing Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance, Lauren R. Roth

Scholarly Works

Although positive and negative assessments of tying health insurance to employment abound, most scholars and policymakers have acknowledged that our long history in this area predicts our future. What they have largely ignored, however, is the extent to which individual attachment to employment-based insurance is at the root of our inability to make broader health reforms. The attachment (1) harms exchange-based insurance and (2) denies employers the ability to use Health Reimbursement Arrangements (“HRAs”) to subsidize the purchase of insurance by their employees on the exchanges.

This Article advocates reducing or eliminating workers’ overvaluation of their health insurance and increasing …

Newsroom: Yelnosky On State Pension Dispute, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Broker-Dealers And Investment Advisers: A Behaviorial-Economics Analysis Of Competing Suggestions For Reform, Polina Demina

Michigan Law Review

For the average investor trying to save for retirement or a child’s college fund, the world of investing has become increasingly complex. These retail investors must turn more frequently to financial intermediaries, such as broker-dealers and investment advisers, to get sound investment advice. Such intermediaries perform different duties for their clients, however. The investment adviser owes his client a fiduciary duty of care and therefore must provide financial advice that is in the client’s best interests, while the broker-dealer must merely provide advice that is suitable to the client’s interests—a lower standard than the fiduciary duty of care. And yet …

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.

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

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

A Public Pensions Bailout: Economics And Law, Terrance O'Reilly

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In several states, public pension plans are at risk of insolvency within a decade. These risks are significant, and the solutions currently contemplated are likely to fall short of what is necessary to contain the problem. If public pension plans do become insolvent, it seems likely the federal government will bail them out. This Article proposes that the federal government prepare for the prospect of federal financial support of public pension plans by instituting an optional regulatory regime for public pensions. If a state elects not to participate, its public pension plans would be ineligible for federal financial support. In …

A Failure To Supervise: How The Bureaucracy And The Courts Abandoned Their Intended Roles Under Erisa, Lauren R. Roth

Pace Law Review

This Article addresses how courts failed to adequately supervise employers administering pension plans before ERISA. Relying on a number of different legal theories—from an initial theory that pensions were gratuities offered by employers to the recognition that pension promises could create contractual rights—the courts repeatedly found ways to allow employers to promise much and provide little to workers expecting retirement security. In Section III, this Article addresses how Congress failed to create an effective structure for strong bureaucratic enforcement and the bureaucratic agencies with enforcement responsibilities failed to fulfill those functions. Finally, in Section IV, this Article discusses how the …

Social Insecurity: A Modest Proposal For Remedying Federal District Court Inconsistency In Social Security Cases, Jonah J. Horwitz

Pace Law Review

This Article addresses a relatively narrow but consequential problem in the system: the inadequacy of federal judicial resolution of appeals from the denial of Social Security disability benefits. It addresses the problem with an equally narrow, and hopefully equally consequential, solution: granting a published district court decision in such a case the power of binding precedent with respect to the judicial district in which the opinion is issued. In so doing, greater uniformity, consistency, fairness, and efficiency would be brought to a process that is badly in need of all.

The Article proceeds in five parts. Part I provides some …

Same Sex Marriage In A Post-Perry And Windsor America, Kathryn L. Moore, Allison I. Connelly, Ross T. Ewing

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

These materials accompanied a presentation at the 2014 Kentucky Bar Association Annual Convention entitled Same Sex Marriage in a Post-Perry and Windsor America. The focus of this presentation was on: the legal landscape following major LGBTQ civil rights cases; how these cases would impact families in Kentucky; and any employment or retirement issues.

Fueling The Death Spiral For Workers' Pensions: The Bankruptcy Process And Multiemployer Pension Plans, Colleen Ray

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

This comment examines how the Bankruptcy Code undermines the retirement security goals of ERISA and MPPAA. The article traces the development of multiemployer pension plans and the regulatory scheme. In addition, it discusses how withdrawal liability functions and how employer withdrawals affect the other employers contributing to a multiemployer pension plan. Next, it addresses the Bankruptcy Code’s treatment of withdrawal liability. Finally, the comment analyzes the impact of discharging withdrawal liability by discussing In re Hostess Brands, Inc.

Pension Action Center, Pension Action Center, University Of Massachusetts Boston

Office of Community Partnerships Posters

The Pension Action Center, (PAC) strives to improve retirees’ and workers’ standard of living in retirement through individual case advocacy; referrals to appropriate programs and professionals; and issue analysis and reform of public policy. The center, which is part of the Gerontology Institute at UMass Boston, focuses on the experience of participants in retirement plans throughout its work. The PAC is a one-of-a-kind organization in New England that touches the lives of thousands of people.

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 …