210
Opinion of the Court
are not contractual.6 Nor can we agree that an installment obligation arises only on the employer's assent. The MPPAA itself creates such an obligation. Unless the employer prepays, the Act requires it, like any other installment debtor, to make payments when due. Like the typical installment creditor, the plan has no right, absent default and acceleration, to sue to collect payments before they are due, and it has no obligation to accelerate on default. The employer and the plan are thus in the same position as parties to an ordinary installment transaction. We see no reason to apply a different limitations rule.
Our holding does not, as the Seventh Circuit believed, "[t]ur[n] six years into twenty-six." Navco, 3 F. 3d, at 172. A pension fund's action to collect unpaid withdrawal liability is timely as to any payments that came due during the six years preceding the suit. Payments that came due prior to that time are lost. Applying that rule here, the Fund may not recover Ferbar's first $345.50 payment. But its action to recover the subsequent installments may proceed.
* * *
For the reasons stated, the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
6 See Kuhn v. Kuhn, 273 Ind. 67, 71-72, 402 N. E. 2d 989, 991 (1980) (court-ordered installments on a child support judgment); Dent v. Casaga, 296 Minn. 292, 297, 208 N. W. 2d 734, 737 (1973) (same); Roberts v. Roberts, 69 Wash. 2d 863, 866-867, 420 P. 2d 864, 866 (1966) (child support and alimony); cf. Miller v. Miller, 122 F. 2d 209, 211 (CADC 1941) (suit to collect unpaid alimony timely because filed within limitations period of first missed installment).
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