Trudy Stanford v. Linda Browne, et al.

In 2011, the Nevada Legislature enacted NRS 111.781, a version of the revocation-on-divorce statute modeled on Uniform Probate Code §2-804, which provided in pertinent part that a divorce or annulment of a marriage revokes any “disposition or appointment of property made by a divorced person to his or her former spouse in a governing instrument....” This statute was amended in 2015 (section 10) to state that it “applies only to non-probate transfers which become effective because of the death of a person on or after October 1, 2011, regardless of when the divorce or annulment occurred.” This statute was applied retroactively to a 1990 divorce decree to preclude petitioner, the only designated primary beneficiary of her former husband’s deferred compensation plan for state employees, from receiving the beneficiary payment after the death of her former husband in 2013. The questions presented for review are: I. Does application of the revocation-upon-divorce statute to Section 457 deferred compensation plan contract and a 1990 divorce performed before the statute’s enactment violate the Contracts Clause? II. Does the Supremacy Clause, U.S. Constitution, Art. 4, Clause. 2, require that a federal statute which covers the entire field within its scope of operation preclude application of a state statute that materially conflicts with the federal statute?