OCTOBER TERM, 1996
Syllabus
certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the fifth circuit
No. 96-79. Argued January 15, 1997—Decided June 2, 1997
Respondents are the sons of Isaac and Dorothy Boggs. After Dorothy's death in 1979, Isaac married petitioner Sandra Boggs. When Isaac retired in 1985, he received various benefits from his employer's retirement plans, including a lump-sum savings plan distribution, which he rolled over into an individual retirement account (IRA); shares of stock from the company's employee stock ownership plan (ESOP); and a monthly annuity payment. Following his death in 1989, this dispute over ownership of the benefits arose between Sandra and the sons. The sons' claim is based on Dorothy's purported testamentary transfer to them, under Louisiana law, of a portion of her community property interest in Isaac's undistributed pension plan benefits. Sandra contested the validity of that transfer, arguing that the sons' claim is pre-empted by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), 29 U. S. C. § 1001 et seq. The Federal District Court disagreed and granted summary judgment against Sandra, and the Fifth Circuit affirmed.
Held: ERISA pre-empts a state law allowing a nonparticipant spouse to transfer by testamentary instrument an interest in undistributed pension plan benefits. Pp. 839-854. (a) In order to resolve this case, the Court need not interpret ERISA's pre-emption clause, § 1144(a), but can simply apply conventional conflict pre-emption principles, asking whether Louisiana's community property law conflicts with ERISA and frustrates its purposes. Pp. 839-841. (b) To the extent Louisiana law provides the sons with a right to a portion of Sandra's survivor's annuity, it is pre-empted. That annuity is a qualified joint and survivor annuity mandated by § 1055, the object of which is to ensure a stream of income to surviving spouses. ERISA's solicitude for the economic security of such spouses would be undermined by allowing a predeceasing spouse's heirs and legatees to have a community property interest in the survivor's annuity. Even a plan participant cannot defeat a nonparticipant surviving spouse's statutory entitlement to such an annuity. See § 1055(c)(2). Nothing in ERISA's language supports the conclusion that Congress decided to permit a pre-deceasing nonparticipant spouse to do so. Testamentary transfers such
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