858
Breyer, J., dissenting
riage to Dorothy belongs both to Isaac and to Dorothy—that is, to them as a community—and not to the one any more than to the other. La. Civ. Code Ann., Art. 2338 (West 1985) (community property includes "property acquired during the existence of the legal regime through the effort, skill, or industry of either spouse"); T. L. James & Co. v. Montgomery, 332 So. 2d 834, 841-844, 846 (La. 1975) (pension benefits are community property even if the employee spouse makes no cash contributions to plan).
Louisiana law, like the law of other States, today allows both women and men to leave their property to their children. La. Civ. Code Ann., Art. 2346 (West 1985) ("Each spouse acting alone may manage, control, or dispose of community property unless otherwise provided by law"). Cf. 16 K. Spaht & W. Hargrave, Louisiana Civil Law Treatise, Matrimonial Regimes 1-2 (1989) (until 1980, Louisiana law considered a husband to be the " 'head and master' " and exclusive manager of community property). And we must assume, as did the Fifth Circuit, that Louisiana law would permit Dorothy's children, to whom she left her property, to obtain an accounting to determine the extent to which the stock, the IRA, and the monthly annuity, in fact belong to them. See 82 F. 3d, at 97 ("[Dorothy's] spouse, or his estate, owes her an obligation to account for her share of the pension"); see also La. Civ. Code Ann., Art. 3261 (West 1961) (succession representative has broad power, subject to probate court approval, to liquidate an estate through sale or exchange of estate assets "to pay debts and legacies, or for any other purpose"). Cf. La. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 9:2801 (West 1991 and Supp. 1997) ( judicial partition of assets on divorce); Hare v. Hodgins, 586 So. 2d 118, 123 (La. 1991) (to equalize allocation of community assets on termination, court may grant "cash or other property in lieu of an actual percentage of the pension payments"); T. L. James, supra, at 851, n. 2 (opinion on rehearing) (same); Sims v. Sims, 358 So. 2d 919, 924 (La. 1978) (formula for calculating a former spouse's
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