Feuer on Glenn ERISA Case

Prominent ERISA attorney, Albert Feuer, writes with these comments about the Court's recent oral argument in the structural conflict of interest ERISA case of MetLife v. Glenn:

What is the basic review standard if there is no conflict?  Arbitrary and capricious, abuse of discretion, or reasonableness.  Counsel for Glenn kept referring to reasonableness as illustrated in the blog. Counsel for Metropolitan Life kept referring to arbitrary and capricious, which he asserted was the same as abuse of discretion (pp. 54-55).   

The readers of your blog may be interested in the attached abstract of my article, "When Does a Domestic Relations Order Determine the Disposition of ERISA Plan Benefits?," which appears in the current issue of the Compensation Journal . . . . 

The article argues that if the plan criteria for benefit designations and revocations for an ERISA plan do not provide for compliance with a domestic relations order, such an order may not determine the disposition of ERISA plan benefits by the plan or the participant's designee under the plan criteria.   For pension plans subject to the ERISA anti-alienation rules, the benefit criteria must provide for compliance with QDROS but with no other domestic relations orders.  For life insurance plans and top-hat plans, domestic relations orders may not generally affect the disposition of ERISA plan benefits by the plan or by the participant's designee under the plan criteria.

The U.S. Supreme Court will decide in this term whether domestic relations orders other than QDROs may determine the disposition of the benefits under a pension plan subject to the ERISA anti-alienation rules. Kennedy v. Plan Administrator for DuPont Savings and Investment Plan, 497 F.3d 426 (5th Cir. 2007) cert. granted 2008 U.S. LEXIS 1291 (U.S. Feb. 19, 2008). The briefs from the petitioner, Kennedy are due [today].

Interesting stuff. Check out Albert's article.

PS