Sun Life Assurance Company of Canada v. Richard E. Jackson, et al.

The Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), 29 U.S.C. § 1001 et seq., generally requires administrators of employee benefit plans to make payments to the “beneficiary who is designated by a participant, or by the terms of [the] plan.” Egelhoff v. Egelhoff ex rel. Breiner, 532 U.S. 141, 147 (2001) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). In 1985, Congress carved out a narrow exception to this rule for court orders that create or assign rights to benefits under a State’s domestic relations laws. See 29 U.S.C. § 1056(d)(3)(B)(ii). An order qualifies for the exception “only if [it] clearly specifies” certain information, including the identity of the “alternate payee” and the benefits to which they are entitled. Id. § 1056(d)(3)(C). If the order fails in any one of those particulars, the plan documents control. In this case, the Sixth Circuit held that an order “clearly specifies” the required information when that information can be inferred from the documents as a whole. That splits sharply with decisions of the Second and Tenth Circuits, which hold that an order must strictly comply on its face with the statute’s requirements. And it is inconsistent with the approach adopted by the Seventh Circuit and two state high courts, which hold that the statute is satisfied so long as the plan administrator has reason to know the required information, even if it appears nowhere in the order. The question presented is: What is required for a domestic relations order to “clearly specif[y]” the information required by 29 U.S.C. § 1056(d)(3)(C)? (i)