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Employment – ERISA – surviving spousal benefits

By: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF//September 15, 2011//

Employment – ERISA – surviving spousal benefits

By: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF//September 15, 2011//

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Employment
ERISA; surviving spousal benefits

Where a surviving spouse indisputably signed a waiver of her benefits, it does not matter whether her signature was personally witnessed.

“It is undisputed that Dr. Burns, the primary plan participant and also the sole plan representative, signed the waiver-and-designation form. As the embodiment of the Plan itself, he himself must have given the form to his wife to sign. Mrs. Burns signed it, something she has never denied. And because the signed consent form made its way into the Plan’s files, Mrs. Burns must have returned it to Dr. Burns. Even if Dr. Burns was not physically present when she signed the form—not a known fact—Dr. Burns obviously knew from his own personal knowledge that the ‘Cheryl Burns’ who signed and returned the form to him was his wife, whose consent was required to complete the necessary paperwork to effectuate the waiver and designate his sons as his beneficiaries. So we are left with this question: When a plan participant, who is also the plan representative, signs a beneficiary-designation form requiring spousal consent, gives the form to his consenting wife, who in turn signs it in multiple places acknowledging her consent and returns it to her husband, must the consent be invalidated because the husband did not sign the form a second time as a ‘witness’? On these facts, invalidating Mrs. Burns’s consent would produce an absurd result. The unusual circumstances of this case lead us to conclude that the Plan was within its discretion to find that Dr. Burns, as a plan representative, verified the authenticity of his wife’s signature on the written consent form and this satisfied § 1055’s witness requirement.”

Affirmed.

10-1521 Burns v. Orthotek, Inc., Employees’ Pension Plan and Trust

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Indiana, Simon, J., Sykes, J.

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