Court Opinion

ID: 9597377
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 00:58:10.234697+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:01:37.979615
License: Public Domain

STOWERS, Justice, dissenting. I dissent with the majority opinion. The community property interest of a non-employee spouse’s interest in retirement benefits should terminate upon his or her death, regardless of whether the retirement plan is contributory or non-contributory. The majority fails to recognize that the sole and primary purpose of retirement benefits is to provide subsistence to the employee and his spouse. In the case of Waite v. Waite, 6 Cal.3d 461, 473, 99 Cal.Rptr. 325, 333, 492 P.2d 13, 21 (1972), the California court points out: The state’s concern, then, lies in provision for the subsistence of the employee and his spouse, not in the extension of benefits to such persons or organizations the spouse may select as the objects of her bounty. Once the spouse dies, of course, her need for subsistence ends, and the state’s interest in her sustenance reaches a coincident completion. When this termination occurs, the state’s concern narrows to the sustenance of the retired employee; its pension payments must necessarily be directed to that sole objective. In this case, Mrs. Burch’s community property interest in the retirement benefits was contingent upon her and Burch living. Certainly, the court when it granted the divorce did not contemplate anything else, since no attempt was made to fix a dollar amount on Mrs. Burch’s community interest in the retirement benefits, nor did the court know what the monthly benefits would be. This being the case, it becomes readily apparent that Mrs. Burch’s interest in the monthly retirement payments was contingent upon her survival and Burch’s survival. To reach any other conclusion would lead to results that are not contemplated in the retirement concepts. The court in Bensing v. Bensing, 25 Cal.App.3d 889, 102 Cal.Rptr. 255 (1972), also recognized that a wife’s interest in her husband’s retirement benefits terminates upon her death. The Bensing court stated: * * * if the wife dies before the monthly payments to her amount to the actuarial “present value” of the pension, the payments to her cease and her share is payable to the husband. Her devisees and heirs are not entitled to the share of the pension she would have received if she had lived. Id. at 893, 102 Cal.Rptr. at 257. Moreover, in the case of In re Marriage of Lionberger, 97 Cal.App.3d 56, 71, 158 Cal.Rptr. 535, 543 (1979), the court struck down an Interlocutory Decree of Dissolution which contained the following provision: Petitioner’s interest is alienable, inheritable, and assignable in the same manner as respondent’s interest in the pension or retirement plan of the Third-Party Defendant. In this case, Burch’s interest in his retirement benefits terminates upon his death; therefore, Mrs. Burch’s interest should also terminate upon her death. To allow Schweitzer to share in Burch’s retirement benefits is an inequitable, unfair, and unreasonable result. For the above reasons, I dissent.