Blogs & Newsletters
Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie to adopt more children, but only if pension reform passes
Today Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie announced that they were committed to working toward a new universal pension system to ensure that all Americans – and particularly their six children – would be able to retire with dignity. “I like building environmentally-green houses,” says Pitt, “but I think pensions are the sexiest issue in the […]
A victory for workers and retirees
In December 2009, Visteon Corp. announced that it was going to terminate its pension plans, which cover some 21,000 workers and retirees, as part of the company’s overall bankruptcy and reorganization effort. Visteon planned to dump its pension obligations onto the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC), the government agency that insures private “defined benefit” pension plans. Because […]
And the survey says…
Earlier this week, the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) and public opinion research firm Mathew Greenwald and Associates released the results of the 2010 Retirement Confidence Survey (RCS). The survey, which has been conducted every year for the past two decades, is a nationwide poll of workers and retirees about their attitudes towards saving for retirement […]
Barking mad over pensions
Tuesday’s New York Times included a full-page ad from the Center for Consumer Freedom*, attacking the Humane Society of the United States. In the ad, the Center claims that the animal-oriented organization is misallocating its money by, among other things, putting $2.5 million toward its retirement plan for employees. This “criticism” has me growling and barking. […]
Retirement and Divorce: Additional Resources
We hope you’ve found our series of blog entries on divorce and retirement assets to be informative. In today’s final blog entry we have listed several additional resources that provide additional information on divorce and retirement assets. ▪ The U.S. Department of Labor has published a helpful booklet about Qualified Domestic Relations Orders called The Division of Retirement […]
Don’t take a pension for granted
Often divorcing couples will opt to divide their marital property by giving one spouse the home and the other spouse the pension. This easy way of dividing marital property may leave one spouse at a disadvantage that isn’t recognized until retirement. While a house may have emotional value, it may not have the same monetary […]
Don’t delay: Submit court orders to the plan right away!
In order to receive retirement benefits that have been awarded in a divorce, it is important to obtain a court order, which tells retirement plans how to divide and pay benefits to the divorced couple. For private retirement plans, these court orders are called Qualified Domestic Relations Orders or QDROs. Other retirement systems call them Domestic Relations Orders or […]
A pension earned during a marriage is usually the property of both spouses
Did you know that, in general, retirement assets earned during a marriage are marital property in the same way that a house and a savings account are? This applies to: ▪ pension benefits earned during a marriage; ▪ retirement savings accounts that were funded during a marriage; and ▪ the earnings on these accounts that accumulated during the marriage. Please […]
Getting divorced? Don’t forget the pension!
What better time than the week after Valentine’s Day to devote a week’s worth of blog entries to divorce? This is the first in a series of blog entries focusing on issues involving divorce and retirement. Enjoy! Did you know that, aside from real estate, retirement plans are usually the largest asset in a marriage? Yet, […]
Workers and Retirees Lose Pensions – and Take Action!
On New Year’s Eve, current and retired employees of Augsburg Fortress, the publishing arm of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, learned that their traditional defined benefit pension plan would be terminated and that they could lose a substantial portion of their benefits as a result of the termination. These days, news of an employer […]
When is a participant not a participant?
As I was reading the most recent edition of the Private Pension Plan Bulletin Abstract of 2007 Form 5500 Annual Reports [PDF], published by the Labor Department’s Employee Benefits Security Administration, I noticed something rather odd in one of the footnotes. In its definition of “participant,” the Bulletin includes “individuals who are merely eligible to elect […]
Military retirement for the 21st century
A few months ago we posted a blog entry about a letter [PDF] we wrote opposing a bill in the Oklahoma state legislature that would limit the ability of former spouses to receive an award of military retirement pay in a divorce settlement. The blog entry received a number of comments – several disagreeing with our […]
