Employee Benefits

Plan administrators may now feel secure in following participant directions on death benefits regardless of conflicting divorce decrees or state laws.  The United States Supreme Court on January 26, 2009, held that a former spouse's waiver of her interest in her ex-husband's retirement benefit did not override the terms of the plan that required the participant to designate a beneficiary.  The divorce decree containing the waiver did not qualify as a qualified domestic relations order and thus did not override the participant's written beneficiary designation form.

Read the entire alert on the key implications.