Opinion ID: 172426
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The 1997 Revision to the U.S. West Pension Plan

Text: Effective January 1, 1997, the 1993 Pension Plan was amended to allow certain management employees to elect a lump sum payout of their retirement benefits, and to include in that lump sum payout a discounted version of the Pensioner Death Benefit (the DLS Equivalent [1] ) that assumed the retiree would be survived by a beneficiary. If a management employee elected to receive this discounted version of the Pensioner Death Benefit in his or her lump sum payout, no other Death Benefit [wa]s payable ... at any time, including the participant's death.... Id. at 685. These amendments to the Death Benefit provisions applied only to ordinary retirements, and not as part of any early retirement program. Further, the amendments did not materially alter the definition of accrued benefit; in other words, death benefits were not considered to be accrued benefits under the plan.