Lead Opinion
OPINION OF THE COURT
Louise Robichaud appeals the district court’s
Robichaud and Samaroo were divorced on October 25, 1984, by the New Jersey
(d) Pensions, Profit Sharing and Bell System Savings Plan
Savings Plan — (1) Husband has a vested pension having a present value, if husband were to retire at this time, of $1,358.59 per month. At the time of husband’s retirement and receipt of his pension he agrees to pay to wife one half of said monthly amount.
Neither the decree nor the property settlement mentions any rights to Samaroo’s survivor’s annuity.
Samaroo died at the age of 53 on September 20, 1987, about three years after the divorce, while still actively employed by AT & T. He was covered under the AT & T Management Pension Plan, a defined benefit plan which provided pensions and survivors’ annuities in amounts based on a percentage of the employee’s average salary times years of service. Based on Sama-roo’s age and years of service, he had a vested right to a deferred vested pension, which would have begun, at the earliest, at age 55. Because Samaroo did not live to the age to qualify to receive pension payments, there were, strictly speaking, no pension benefits that ever became payable in respect of Samaroo. Therefore, the benefit expressly mentioned in the divorce settlement agreement never came to fruition.
However, the Plan provides a pre-retirement survivor annuity available to the surviving spouse of any Plan participant who died after vesting but before retiring.- If there is no surviving spouse, there is no annuity.
Under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 as it existed at the time of the Samaroo-Robichaud divorce, it was unclear whether state divorce decrees could effectively convey a share in one spouse’s pension benefits to the other spouse. See generally Dial v. NFL Player Supplemental Disability Plan,
The Plan denied Robichaud’s claim for a pre-retirement survivor’s annuity because the divorce decree did not mention any entitlement to such rights, and in the absence of a surviving spouse or a QDRO designating a former spouse as such, there was simply no pre-retirement survivor’s annuity payable in respect of Samaroo.
After a hearing, the New Jersey state court held that the Plan did not have standing to object to alteration of the divorce decree. Winston Samaroo’s estate did not oppose Robichaud’s request to amend the decree nunc pro tunc, since conveying the survivorship rights once Sa-maroo was dead did not cost the estate anything, but undid the effect of Samaroo dying without a survivor. The attorney who drafted the agreement testified that the issue of survivor’s benefits never came up at the time of the agreement:
Q: That section [of the agreement] is silent on the issue of survivor benefits?
A: That’s correct.
Q: Okay. Was the survivor benefit addressed at that time?
A: No, it never came to mind at that time, it wasn’t brought up at all by you [Robichaud], or by Winston, or by me.
Robichaud herself testified that “neither Winston [nor his attorney] or I thought about the survivor rights to this pension.” Based on the evidence that the divorce was amicable, the state court amended the divorce decree retroactively to give Robi-chaud “rights of survivorship to 50% of [Samaroo’s] vested pension benefits.” The court stated, however, that whether or not the state court order resulted in any benefits becoming payable to Robichaud under the Plan was a question of federal law over which the federal court had retained juris
After the state court’s ruling, Robichaud and the Plan filed cross motions for summary judgment in the pending federal district court action. The district court examined the statutory requirements for a QDRO under 29 U.S.C. § 1056(d)(3)(C) and (D). The court held that the amended divorce order satisfied the specificity requirements of section 1056(d)(3)(C), but not the substantive requirements of section 1056(d)(3)(D). Under that section a domestic relations order is not a QDRO if it requires the plan to provide any type of benefits not otherwise provided by the plan or to provide increased benefits. 29 U.S.C. § 1056(d)(3)(D)(i) and (ii). The court relied on the reasoning of Hopkins v. AT & T Global Information Solutions Co.,
We review a grant of summary judgment de novo, using the same standard the district court must use: summary judgment is proper only if there are no genuine issues of material fact and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(c); Hullett v. Towers, Perrin, Forster & Crosby, Inc.,
The district court stated that it would review the Plan’s denial of Robichaud’s claim under the arbitrary and capricious standard of review appropriate when, as here, a benefit plan gives the plan administrator discretionary authority to construe the terms of the plan. See Firestone Tire and Rubber Co. v. Bruch,
We turn first to the statutory language defining QDROs. Under section 1056(d)(3)(D)
A domestic relations order meets the requirements of this subparagraph only if such order—
(i) does not require a plan to provide any type or form of benefit, or any option, not otherwise provided under the plan, [and]
(ii) does not require the plan to provide increased benefits (determined on the basis of actuarial value)....
A domestic decree that would have the effect of increasing the liability of the Plan over what has been provided in the Plan (read in light of federal law) is not a
The district court relied on the Fourth Circuit’s decision in Hopkins, which recognized that defined benefit plans are based on actuarial calculations that would be rendered invalid if participants were allowed to change the operative facts retroactively. In Hopkins a pension plan participant retired and began to draw his pension in the form of a joint and survivor annuity based on the lives of himself and his current wife. Sometime later, his former wife obtained a state court order that she should be treated as the participant’s surviving spouse for purposes of the annuity.
Because the disbursement of plan benefits is based on actuarial computations, the plan administrator must know the life expectancy of the person receiving the Surviving Spouse Benefits to determine the participant’s monthly Pension Benefits. As a result, the plan administrator needs to know, on the day the participant retires, to whom the Surviving Spouse Benefit is payable.
Reasoning similar to that in Hopkins was employed in a New Jersey survivor benefits case, Ross v. Ross,
Robichaud argues that by determining the right to benefits as of the day of Samaroo’s death, the Plan has cheated Sa-maroo out of receiving any benefit from participating in the Plan. But actually, successful operation of a defined benefit plan requires that the plan’s liabilities be ascertainable as of particular dates. The annuity provisions of a defined benefit plan are a sort of insurance, based on actuarial calculations predicting the future demands on the plan. Some annuity participants will die without ever receiving a payment and some participants will receive payments far in excess of the value of their contributions. The fact that some participants die without a surviving spouse to qualify for benefits is not an unfair forfeiture, as Robichaud contends, but rather part of the ordinary workings of an insurance plan. Allowing the insured to change the operative facts after he has lost the gamble would wreak actuarial havoc on administration of the Plan.
Besides, it is inaccurate to say that Sa-maroo was deprived of any benefit from the Plan. Until he died, Samaroo enjoyed the right to remarry and thereby bestow on a new wife the survivorship rights un
Robichaud urges us to follow an unpublished district court decision, Payne v. GM/UAW Pension Plan, No. 95-CV73554DT,
Far from being persuaded by the reasoning in Payne, we think it provides a telling demonstration of why the order in this case cannot be regarded as a QDRO. In Payne, the husband expressly refused to designate the first wife as his surviving spouse, apparently in view of the fact that he was planning to remarry. After his death (which, incidentally, occurred before he and his new wife had been married long enough for her to qualify for survivor’s benefits), the first wife took advantage of his absence to obtain an amended decree giving her the benefits she had not been able to obtain through the divorce negotiations. This is clearly an attempt to expand the pension plan’s liability, and the order purporting to accomplish that expansion cannot therefore be recognized as a QDRO under section 1056(d)(3)(D). By holding that the Plan in this case was obligated to recognize the New Jersey court’s order in this case as a QDRO, we would make pension plans vulnerable to the sort of abuse shown in Payne.
Finally, Robichaud argues that we must give retroactive effect to the state court amendment of the decree because that decree stated that it was nunc pro tunc. Actually, the state judge recognized that he had power only to affect the legal relation between the Robichaud and the Samaroo estate and that the effect of the amendment on the Plan was a matter of federal ERISA law over which the federal district court had retained jurisdiction when it remanded the divorce case to the state courts. The state court said: “Of course, it will be for the federal court to decide whether or not there were any benefits to be left to Ms. Robichaud.” This observation was correct; the effect of the amended decree on the Plan is a matter of federal law which the district court did not remand to the state court. See Samaroo,
The judgment of the district court is affirmed.
Notes
. The Honorable Garrett E. Brown, Jr., United States District Judge for the District of New Jersey.
. Robichaud has chosen to amend the original divorce decree rather than relying on that decree to entitle her to the pre-retirement survivor’s annuity; however, she suggests in her reply brief that the original decree could have been read to give her that right. Robi-chaud tells us the only issue in this case is the validity of the amended order, and therefore we conclude that the adequacy of the original decree is not before us. However, we briefly observe that there are several problems with reading the original decree to convey a survivor’s annuity to Robichaud. First, the property settlement apparently only gives Ro-bichaud the right to receive one half of Sama-roo’s pension payments of $1,358.89 per month, the value of Samaroo’s pension rights at the time of the divorce. This shows an intent to divide property rights existing at the time of the divorce, not to give Robichaud an interest in post-divorce earnings. Robichaud now claims half of all benefits payable with respect to Samaroo, including benefits earned after the divorce.
Second, the original decree entitles Robi-chaud to receive the benefit payments at the
Third, the original decree was silent on the issue of survivor’s rights. Congress has required QDROs to be quite specific in order to convey ERISA benefits. The statute requires a QDRO to state specifically the extent of the alternate payee's interest in the plan, 29 U.S.C. § 1056(d)(3)(C)(ii) and (iii), and states that for purposes of survivor annuities, a former spouse can be treated as a surviving spouse "to the extent provided in any qualified domestic relations order.” 29 U.S.C. § 1056(d)(3)(F). In Roth v. Roth,
Fourth, the original decree was entered before the effective date of the Retirement Equity Act. See page -, supra.
. Our holding and opinion are limited to the particular facts before us, and it is not necessary that we reach the broader issue expressed in the dissent's characterization of our holding, infra at 192.
Dissenting Opinion
dissenting:
Today the majority holds, in effect, that a state court’s power to enter or modify a Qualified Domestic Relations Order (“QDRO”) with respect to a participant’s interest in a pension plan ends with the
Initially, I note that the majority’s holding is not compelled by anything in the governing Act. The only statutory authority cited by the majority is 29 U.S.C. § 1056(d)(3)(D), which provides that a QDRO cannot require a plan to provide increased benefits. The majority approves the District Court’s holding to the effect that “a decree conferring survivors’ benefits on Robichaud after those benefits have lapsed would provide increased benefits and therefore cannot be a QDRO.” Supra at 190. By assuming that the benefits were conferred after they had lapsed (i.e., after Mr. Samaroo’s death), however, it begs the central question whether the state court’s entry of its order nunc pro tunc, as of a date before Mr. Samaroo’s death, is to be given effect.
The majority’s holding also is not compelled by caselaw. The cases relied on by the District Court and .the majority both involved attempts to divest and transfer benefits already vested in a subsequent spouse. See Hopkins v. AT&T Global Information Solutions Co.,
The majority characterizes the state court’s retroactive amendment of a divorce decree in Payne as “abuse”, apparently because the husband had refused to grant the requested survivor designation in negotiations while he was alive.
In rejecting the contention that the state court decree must be given retroactive effect because it stated that it was nunc pro tunc, the majority explains that the effect
In my view the question before us— whether to effectuate the state court’s nunc pro tunc order — is conclusively answered in the affirmative by the Full Faith and Credit Act, which provides that the judicial proceedings of a state court “shall have the same full faith and credit in every court within the United States ... as they have by law op usage in the courts of such State....” 28 U.S.C. § 1738. We have observed that this section “directs all courts to treat a state court judgment with the same respect that it would receive in the courts of the rendering state”, and that we may not “employ [our] own rules ... in determining the effect of state judgments, but must accept the rules chosen by the State from which the judgment is taken”. In re General Motors Corp. Pick-Up Truck Fuel Tank Products Liability Litigation,
Because the courts of New Jersey would respect a nunc pro tunc provision in a final judgment, we are required to respect it as well. See, e.g., Fulton v. Fulton,
Although I believe the full faith and credit analysis is dispositive, giving effect to the state court’s decree also furthers the policy interests at stake. There is good reason to allow state courts some leeway in entering or modifying domestic relations orders even after a participant’s death, or retirement, or other status-altering event. The state courts are charged with administering the important, and often complex and volatile, area of domestic relations law.
There appears to be no strong countervailing policy reason to warrant such interference in this case. I agree that it is important not to upset the actuarial basis of pension plans, but it is hard to believe that the single survivor benefit at issue here is material to the actuarial soundness of a plan with 87,500 participants. Moreover, the Plan does not allege that it reduced funding levels or otherwise changed its position in reliance on a belief that it would not have to pay a surviving spouse benefit with respect to Mr. Samaroo.
Finally, I cannot agree with the majority’s contention that designation of Ms. Robichaud as surviving spouse after Mr. Samaroo died without remarrying would allow him to “have his cake and eat it, too”
For the foregoing reasons, I would reverse the decision of the District Court and remand with instructions to accord full faith and credit to the state court’s retroactive QDRO.
. The majority expressly forecloses a post-death modification of a QDRO which requires "increased benefits.” In addition, the Hopkins and Ross cases on which the majority's decision is premised foreclose any shifting of benefits once vested in a particular payee upon a participant's death.. See infra 191-92. I am therefore unable to conceive of circumstances in which, under the majority's reasoning, a meaningful alteration of a QDRO could be effected post-death.
. There appears to be no dispute that if the order had actually been entered on its stated effective date, Ms. Robichaud would be entitled to the survivor's benefit she seeks. There is also no dispute that the Plan did not appeal the state court’s decision, making it final.
. The Ross holding was premised in part on the Court’s observation that "[n]o federal case has allowed a QDRO to be entered after a participant’s death.’
.See supra at 191. The majority's opinion reflects an implicit assumption that domestic relations orders merely reflect what the parties have agreed to. Cf. supra at 191-92 (stating that Mr. Samaroo — rather than the state court — could have entered a QDRO while he lived, and that his estate — rather than the state court — designated Ms. Robichaud as surviving spouse after his death). While it may often work that way in practice, I know of no rule that precludes a state court from ordering relief that one party has refused to accede to in negotiations. On the contrary, although courts in New Jersey will enforce consensual agreements for equitable distribution "if found to be fair and just”, they nevertheless retain "the utmost leeway and flexibility in determining what is just and equitable in making allocations of marital assets”. Smith v. Smith,
. Cf. Ross,
. See, e.g. Hisquierdo v. Hisquierdo,
. As the District Court acknowledged, "Congress” concern that the combination of ERISA preemption and the provisions of REA would lead to unnecessary federal involvement in state domestic relations laws prompted the statutory exemption of [QDROs] from ERISA preemption. Samaroo,
. Thus, for example, the court in Ross lamented that the "unfortunate result” of its holding (disallowing correction of a QDRO where benefits had vested in a subsequent spouse) was that "equity will not prevail.”
Post-death (or post-retirement) entry or modification of a decree may reasonably occur in a variety of circumstances, including, e.g., clerical error, appeals, and delays attendant on the formulation of an appropriate order. This is an example of-the former: Mr. Samaroo's attorney, who drafted the domestic relations order, testified that, although .-they did not specifically discuss survivorship benefits, Mr. Samaroo indicated his intent that Ms. Robichaud receive half interest in "everything he had or was entitled to” and that it was only due to the attorney's unfamiliarity with ERISA that the survivor designation was erroneously omitted. See Joint Appendix at 553-54. Counsel also testified that he had no doubt that Mr. Samaroo would have wanted Ms. Robichaud to receive survivorship benefits, see Joint Appendix at 555, and confirmed in a submission to the state court that "the intent of [Mr. Samaroo] at that time was to give this 50 per cent [survivorship] right to his then wife unconditionally and without any contingencies thereto.” Joint Appendix at 583. Even if the evidence regarding the scrivener’s error is inconclusive, the state court’s acceptance of the attorney’s word should not be disregarded by a federal court bound to give the state court’s determination full faith and credit.
. Maj. Op. at 191.
. The majority cites 29 U.S.D.C. § 1056(d)(3)(F) for the proposition that "if QDRO designates former spouse as participant’s surviving spouse, current spouse shall not be treated as spouse for purposes of plan”. Id. I do not read the statute to provide such an all-or-nothing choice. Under the statute, a former spouse shall be treated as a surviving spouse, and a subsequent spouse shall not be so treated, only "[t]o the extent provided” in a QDRO. 29 U.S.C. § 1056(d)(3)(F). Here, the "extent provided” is 50%. The REA expressly recognizes the right to make such partial designations. See 29 U.S.C. § 1056(d)(3)(B)(i)(I) (defining QDRO as order which, inter alia, recognizes or assigns right to receive "all or a portion” of benefits under a plan). A natural reading would call for treating Ms. Robichaud as surviving spouse to the extent of 50% of the applicable benefit, and treating a new wife (if