{"id":6979,"date":"2019-06-19T09:53:33","date_gmt":"2019-06-19T13:53:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/resources.evans-legal.com\/?p=6979"},"modified":"2022-05-19T14:30:49","modified_gmt":"2022-05-19T18:30:49","slug":"erisa-does-not-preempt-enforcement-of-contractual-waiver-of-pension-stale-affidavit-did-not-establish-grounds-for-divorce","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/resources.evans-legal.com\/?p=6979","title":{"rendered":"ERISA Does Not Preempt Enforcement of Contractual Waiver of Pension; Stale Affidavit Did Not Establish Grounds for Divorce"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The execution of a post-nuptial agreement as part of the divorce proceedings was an effective waiver of the right of the surviving spouse to a joint-and-survivor pension annuity, and that waiver can be enforced against the surviving spouse despite failure to comply with the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (&#8220;ERISA&#8221;), which otherwise preempted state law, because ERISA does not\u00a0bar an estate from recovering pension funds distributed to an ex-spouse who had executed a waiver of rights to those funds.\u00a0 Pa.R.C.P. 1920.42(b)(2) is a valid exercise of the rule making power of the courts, and so grounds for divorce were not established within the meaning of 23 Pa.C.S. \u00a7 3323(g) when the decedent&#8217;s affidavit of consent to the divorce was filed more than thirty days after it was executed, and the decedent&#8217;s designation of his wife as beneficiary of his life insurance was not modified by 20 Pa.C.S. \u00a7 6111.2.\u00a0 <em>Easterday Estate<\/em>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pacourts.us\/assets\/opinions\/Supreme\/out\/J-92A-2018mo.pdf?cb=4\">653 Pa. 143<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/scholar.google.com\/scholar_case?case=13989599858755316729\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">209 A.3d 331<\/a> (2019), <em>aff&#8217;ng<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/scholar.google.com\/scholar_case?case=11896490392503490629&amp;q=Easterday\">171 A.3d 911<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pacourts.us\/assets\/opinions\/Superior\/out\/25010420.pdf\">2017 PA Super 315<\/a> (10\/3\/17), <em>aff&#8217;ng on other grounds<\/em>,\u00a06 Fid.Rep.3d 178 (O.C. Montgomery Co. 3\/22\/2016).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>(See the earlier reports <a href=\"http:\/\/resources.evans-legal.com\/?p=4310\">on the decision of the Orphans&#8217; Court<\/a>. and <a href=\"http:\/\/resources.evans-legal.com\/?p=4982\">the decision of the Superior Court<\/a>.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The execution of a post-nuptial agreement as part of the divorce proceedings was an effective waiver of the right of the surviving spouse to a joint-and-survivor pension annuity, and that waiver can be enforced against the surviving spouse despite failure &hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/resources.evans-legal.com\/?p=6979\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[233,100,532],"class_list":["post-6979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinions","tag-divorce","tag-erisa","tag-modification-by-circumstances","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/resources.evans-legal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/resources.evans-legal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/resources.evans-legal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/resources.evans-legal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/resources.evans-legal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6979"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/resources.evans-legal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6979\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9166,"href":"https:\/\/resources.evans-legal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6979\/revisions\/9166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/resources.evans-legal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/resources.evans-legal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/resources.evans-legal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}