Court Opinion

ID: 9685321
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 14:30:18.469999+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:05:18.442407
License: Public Domain

KENNARD, J., Concurring and Dissenting.
Under California community property law, a spouse’s retirement benefits are community property to the extent the spouse earned them by employment during the marriage. Upon dissolution of the marriage, such benefits, like other community property, are to be divided equally between the spouses, even though the employee spouse may not yet have retired or even have become eligible for retirement. Because immediate division is frequently impractical in these cases, actual division of community property retirement benefits may be postponed until the employee spouse retires or becomes eligible to retire. In that situation, the other spouse may opt to begin receiving his or her community share of the retirement benefits at any time after the employee spouse becomes eligible to retire. At issue in this case are the legal requirements for the exercise of this option.
*389The majority holds that a nonemployee spouse becomes entitled to payment of his or her community property interest in the employee spouse’s retirement benefits as of the date on which he or she files a motion in the superior court seeking immediate payment. I disagree. In my view, a non-employee spouse should not be required to resort to formal judicial proceedings to exercise the right to immediate payment of retirement benefits; an unequivocal written demand to the employee spouse should suffice to trigger entitlement to payment.
Here, the nonemployee spouse first made an unequivocal written demand for payment of her community property share of her former spouse’s pension by filing a motion in superior court seeking modification of the judgment of marital dissolution. For that reason, under either my approach or the majority’s, her entitlement to payment commenced at the time of that court filing.
I
Carlos V. Cornejo (hereafter Carlos) and Joanne Lois Cornejo (hereafter Lois) married in 1956. The couple separated and filed for marital dissolution in 1978. Throughout the marriage, Carlos was employed by the San Francisco Unified School District and made contributions to the California State Teachers’ Retirement System.
On January 8,1980, the superior court entered a final judgment dissolving the marriage, but retained jurisdiction to determine Lois’s entitlement to her community property share of Carlos’s retirement benefits.
One year later, in In re Marriage of Gillmore (1981) 29 Cal.3d 418, 423-426 [174 Cal.Rptr. 493, 629 P.2d 1], this court held that, after a dissolution of marriage, a nonemployee spouse need not wait until the employee spouse actually retires to begin receiving his or her community property share of the employee spouse’s retirement benefits, but can demand immediate payment as soon as the employee spouse is eligible to retire. The employee spouse then has the option of retiring and paying the nonemployee spouse his or her share of the retirement benefits, or continuing to work and using other funds to compensate the nonemployee spouse for the retirement benefits due him or her. (Id. at p. 426.)
In this case, Carlos became eligible for retirement on May 16,1989, at age 60. He chose to continue working, however.
More than three years later, on August 3, 1992, counsel for Lois wrote to Carlos’s attorney inquiring whether Carlos intended to retire, and stating that *390if Carlos did not, Lois would seek payment of her community property share of the pension benefits, citing in support this court’s 1981 decision in In re Marriage of Gillmore, supra, 29 Cal.3d 418. In the letter, Lois’s attorney asserted that the monthly payment due Lois was $1,381. On September 30, 1992, Carlos’s attorney responded in writing; he contended that Lois was entitled to only $394 per month (a sum based on Lois’s pro rata share of the funds deposited in Carlos’s retirement account during their marriage). In a letter dated October 13, 1992, counsel for Lois reasserted that Lois was entitled to a monthly pension payment in excess of $1,300, and expressed the desire “for a mutually satisfactory resolution of the matter,” adding that Lois was “willing to wait approximately six months before [Carlos] would commence payments to her of her share of the retirement benefits.”
Some five and one-half months later, on March 31, 1993, with the parties still in disagreement as to the amount of Lois’s community property share in Carlos’s retirement benefits, Lois filed a motion in superior court for modification of the dissolution judgment. She sought an order directing Carlos to pay her $1,381 per month, retroactive to May 16, 1989 (the date on which Carlos became eligible to retire). The trial court granted Lois’s motion and awarded payments retroactive to May 16, 1989, of $1,126 per month (a figure based on the reduced monthly pension Carlos would receive under a retirement option providing “survival benefits” to Carlos’s beneficiaries after his death).
Carlos appealed, challenging the award of retroactive payments. The Court of Appeal affirmed the trial court’s judgment. We granted Carlos’s petition for review.
II
The majority concludes that because Lois, the nonemployee spouse, did not demand her community property share of Carlos’s retirement benefits until nearly four years after the date on which Carlos was first eligible to retire, Lois is not entitled to payment of such benefits retroactive to the date of initial retirement eligibility. I agree.
The majority further holds, however, that a nonemployee spouse’s right to receive payment of the share of retirement benefits due him or her does not begin until the nonemployee spouse files a motion with the court asserting a right to payment. I disagree. In my view, a clear and unequivocal written demand for immediate payment by the nonemployee spouse should be sufficient to trigger the obligation of the employee spouse to begin payments. The majority presents no reason why this solution would not be both *391fair and feasible. The majority asserts that a demand for payment is insufficient because, it conjectures, the demand “might be oral in its delivery, indeterminate in its substance, or ambiguous in its language.” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 385.) None of these criticisms posed by the majority, however, is a valid objection to my proposal, which would require that the nonemployee’s demand for payment of retirement benefits be in writing and unambiguous.
In making the nonemployee spouse’s exercise of community property pension rights contingent on the commencement of legal action, the majority weakens the underpinnings of this court’s decision in In re Marriage of Gillmore, supra, 29 Cal.3d. 418, which sought to protect the nonemployee spouse’s community property interest in the employee spouse’s retirement benefits. Gillmore held that once an employee spouse becomes eligible to receive payment of retirement benefits, the nonemployee spouse has as of that time an immediate right to payment of his or her community property share of those benefits and need not wait until the employee spouse’s actual retirement to obtain such benefits. (In re Marriage of Gillmore, supra, 29 Cal.3d at pp. 422-423, 428.) To hold otherwise, we said in Gillmore, would deprive the nonemployee spouse “of the immediate enjoyment of an asset earned by the community during the marriage,” and would subject the nonemployee spouse “to the risk of losing the asset completely” if the employee spouse were to die while still employed. (Id. at p. 424.) Thus, an employee spouse may not, by continuing to work, defeat the nonemployee spouse’s community property interest. (Id. at p. 423.) Rather, an employee spouse who decides not to retire when eligible to do so “must reimburse [the nonemployee spouse] for the share of community property that she [or he] loses as the result of that decision.” (Id. at p. 427.) The nonemployee spouse, however, “may choose to wait, preferring to receive the retirement "benefits when the employee spouse actually retires,” at which time the value of the pension plan may have increased. (Id. at p. 428.) But if the nonemployee spouse opts for immediate payment of that spouse’s share of the community property interest in the retirement benefits, she or he “has a right to do so.” (Ibid.)
Under our decision in In re Marriage of Gillmore, supra, 29 Cal.3d 418, in marriage dissolution cases, all nonemployee spouses have the right to begin receiving immediate payment of retirement benefits at any time after the date their ex-spouses become eligible to retire. But under today’s majority holding, the nonemployee spouse cannot exercise the right to begin receiving retirement benefits unless he or she has the wherewithal to retain counsel and to pursue court action. Nonemployee spouses lacking such financial resources will be unable to exercise their community property pension rights, and as a consequence will suffer the loss of their rightful share of *392retirement benefits, unless and until they can afford to hire a lawyer to bring formal legal proceedings asserting their rights.
Furthermore, because under the majority’s holding a nonemployee spouse’s unequivocal written demand for payment of his or her share of retirement benefits is a meaningless act that cannot trigger the employee spouse’s obligation to pay benefits, it is in the employee spouse’s financial interest to ignore the written demand and to wait until the nonemployee spouse brings a formal court proceeding. To put it succinctly, the majority’s holding encourages “stonewalling” by the employee spouse.
There would be no incentive for the employee spouse to “stonewall,” however, if, as I propose, the nonemployee spouse’s right to payment of his or her community property interest in the employee spouse’s retirement benefits were to accrue on the date on which the nonemployee spouse made an unequivocal written demand for such benefits; an employee spouse who refused to honor the request would owe payments dating back to the time of the nonemployee spouse’s initial written demand.
The majority also expresses concern that a rule which makes community property retirement benefit payments commence upon demand might “encourage litigation.” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 386.) To the contrary, it is the majority’s rule that encourages litigation by requiring formal legal proceedings before a nonemployee spouse can collect his or her share of the community property interest in the employee spouse’s retirement benefits. In contrast, the written, unequivocal demand rule that I propose may dispense with the need to litigate any issue. Upon receiving the demand and knowing that they are responsible for all payments due after the date set forth in the demand, most employee spouses would likely begin payments promptly rather than incur needless litigation whose conclusion is foregone. Even if, as occurred here, the parties dispute the exact amount due the nonemployee spouse, my proposed solution would preserve the ability of the parties to resolve their differences without court intervention. In In re Marriage of Gillmore, supra, 29 Cal.3d at page 428, this court expressed confidence that parties in marriage dissolution cases would “ [frequently” be able “to arrive at a reasonable settlement of these issues.”
Therefore, unlike the majority, I would hold that a nonemployee spouse’s entitlement to payment of his or her community property interest in the employee spouse’s retirement benefits begins on the date when the nonemployee spouse notifies the employee spouse in writing of electing to receive payment immediately rather than on the actual date of the employee spouse’s retirement. Upon notice of the election, the employee spouse can decide *393whether to retire and start collecting retirement benefits or to continue working and paying the nonemployee spouse “an amount equivalent to her [or his] interest.” (In re Marriage of Gillmore, supra, 29 Cal.3d at p. 427.)
In this case, the result is the same irrespective of which rule is applied: Lois never made a written demand for immediate payment of her community property share of Carlos’s retirement benefits until March 31, 1993, when she filed in the superior court a motion to modify the dissolution judgment. (The August 3,1992, letter sent by Lois’s attorney made no specific demand for immediate payment of Lois’s share of Carlos’s retirement benefits; it merely inquired whether Carlos intended to retire. And in the letter of October 13, 1992, the attorney expressed Lois’s willingness to defer payment of any retirement benefits for another six months.) Thus, under either the majority’s rule or my proposed rule, Lois’s entitlement to retirement benefit payments commenced on March 31, 1993. Accordingly, while I disagree with the rule the majority adopts, I concur in the judgment.