Opinion ID: 1786277
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 12

Heading: language of erisa

Text: As the majority opinion acknowledges, a court may resort to the federal common law to answer a question only when ERISA is silent on the issue. See, Mers v. Marriott Intern., 144 F.3d 1014 (7th Cir. 1998). Here, ERISA expressly states that fiduciaries, including plan administrators, must discharge their duties in accordance with the documents and instruments governing the plan. 29 U.S.C. § 1104(a)(1)(D). It is beyond question that one of a plan administrator's duties is to determine who is entitled to receive a plan's death benefit once an employee who belongs to the plan dies. See Egelhoff v. Egelhoff, 532 U.S. 141, 121 S.Ct. 1322, 149 L.Ed.2d 264 (2001). It necessarily follows that in carrying out their duty to determine who is entitled to receive benefits, plan administrators must examine the plan documents rather than turning to rules supplied by the federal common law. If, as here, the plan documents state that the beneficiary will be the person or persons that the employee designates in his or her last written notice, the written notice governs who the beneficiary will be. Extraneous attempts to waive the beneficiary interest are ineffective. I recognize that a majority of courts has rejected this interpretation of 29 U.S.C. § 1104(a)(1)(D). Ordinarily, I might give this factor considerable weight in deciding which of two conflicting positions Nebraska should follow. But, not one of the courts in this majority has explained why the statutory analysis used by those courts adopting the plan-documents rule is flawed. In fact, the closest that any court has come to providing a reason for rejecting the claim that 29 U.S.C. § 1104(a)(1)(D) controls the issue is the Fifth Circuit's claim that the section is a very thin reed upon which to conclude that ERISA expressly controls whether a beneficiary interest can be waived in a divorce decree. Manning v. Hayes, 212 F.3d 866, 872 (5th Cir.2000). Because the waiver rule is based, at best, on throwaway, conclusory statements rather than a careful analysis of statutory language, I believe the fact that a majority of cases have adopted it is entitled to little weight. Moreover, the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Egelhoff v. Egelhoff, supra , bolsters the conclusion that the language of ERISA, rather than the federal common law, controls the issue presented by this case. In Egelhoff, the court held that ERISA preempted a Washington statute that provided that the designation of a spouse as a beneficiary of a nonprobate asset is revoked automatically upon divorce. The court concluded that the statute had an impermissible connection with the beneficiary determination. It reasoned that the statute ran counter to ERISA's commands that a plan shall specify the basis on which payments are made to and from the plan, § 1102(b)(4), and that the fiduciary shall administer the plan in accordance with the documents and instruments governing the plan, § 1104(a)(1)(D), making payments to a beneficiary who is designated by a participant, or by the terms of [the] plan. § 1002(8). (Emphasis supplied.) 532 U.S. at 147, 121 S.Ct. 1322. Egelhoff, although not directly on point, undercuts the majority's claim that ERISA remains silent on how plan administrators should determine who the beneficiary of a death benefit is. According to the Court, 29 U.S.C. § 1104(a)(1)(D)when coupled with other ERISA provisionsfunctions as a command that a plan administrator should determine the beneficiary in accordance with the documents and instruments governing the plan. If so, the plan administrator need not supplement ERISA with federal common-law rules that look outside the plan documents.