Nevada family-law case summaries

Egan Walker and Laura Latimer divorced in 2002 after 13 years of marriage. During the marriage, Walker had worked as a deputy district attorney and earned about 8.54 years of credits in Nevada's Public Employees' Retirement System (PERS). As part of the divorce, the couple signed a marital settlement agreement that gave Latimer half of Walker's PERS retirement benefits accrued through June 1, 2001. To secure her share, the agreement called for a "qualified domestic relations order" (QDRO) - a court order recognized by retirement plans that directs how benefits are split. The QDRO required Walker to choose "Option 2" at retirement, which is a payment plan where the retiree gets a smaller monthly check during life so that, after death, a designated beneficiary continues receiving the same amount for life. After the divorce, Walker remarried, then later returned to public service as a court master and ultimately as a district court judge. When he became a judge, he had a one-time choice to keep his retirement benefits in PERS or move them into the Judicial Retirement System (JRS). He chose JRS and named his current wife as his beneficiary. Years later, when planning for retirement, Walker discovered that PERS and JRS had historically allowed only one person to be named as an Option 2 beneficiary. That created a problem: Latimer was contractually entitled to be an Option 2 beneficiary for her share, but Walker also wanted his current wife to be an Option 2 beneficiary for the rest. Walker asked the district court to sort it out. The district court agreed Walker could name both his ex-wife and current wife as Option 2 beneficiaries, but it also said Latimer was entitled only to 4.25 years of PERS credits and got nothing from the JRS account. The Nevada Supreme Court agreed with the district court that the relevant Nevada statute does not actually prohibit naming more than one Option 2 beneficiary. The court read the statute alongside other Nevada laws protecting a former spouse's interest in retirement benefits, and concluded that allowing two Option 2 beneficiaries best honors what the parties bargained for in the divorce: Latimer keeps her contracted-for share, and the current wife receives the rest. The court was not persuaded by PERS's arguments that federal tax law or actuarial complexity required a single-beneficiary rule. But the Supreme Court disagreed with the part of the order that gave Latimer credits in a PERS account that no longer exists. Because Walker had moved his PERS service credits into JRS, his old PERS account was closed, so awarding Latimer 4.25 years of credits in that closed account was, in the court's words, awarding her "a portion of nothing." The court held that when an ex-spouse has a protected interest in PERS retirement benefits and the member then transfers those benefits to JRS, the ex-spouse's interest follows the money into JRS. The case was sent back to the district court to fix that part of the order.