{"id":841,"date":"2025-04-06T21:08:11","date_gmt":"2025-04-06T21:08:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/?p=841"},"modified":"2025-04-06T21:08:11","modified_gmt":"2025-04-06T21:08:11","slug":"seventh-circuit-adopts-a-slayer-rule-for-inheritance-of-erisa-benefits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/2025\/04\/06\/seventh-circuit-adopts-a-slayer-rule-for-inheritance-of-erisa-benefits\/","title":{"rendered":"Seventh Circuit adopts a slayer rule for inheritance of ERISA benefits"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>common law preventing a son from inheriting pension benefit funds in a plan managed by ERISA (Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974) when he murdered his parent. <a href=\"https:\/\/cases.justia.com\/federal\/appellate-courts\/ca6\/21-5562\/21-5562-2024-08-19.pdf?ts=1724095818\">Standard Ins. co. v. Guy<\/a>, 115 F.4th 518 (6th Cir. 2024). The case seems to be replay of the famous opinion by the New York Court of Appeals in <a href=\"\/\/\/Users\/joesinger\/Desktop\/New%20Downloads\/22_N.E._188.pdf\" class=\"mtli_attachment mtli_pdf\">Riggs v. Palmer<\/a>, 22 N.E. 188 (N.Y. 1889).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Riggs opinion has this famous quote:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cBut it never could have been [the lawmakers\u2019] intention that a donee who murdered the testator to make the will operative should have any benefit under it. If such a case had been present to their minds, and it had been supposed necessary to make some provision of law to meet it, it cannot be doubted that they would have provided for it.\u201d The Sixth Circuit viewed ERISA as \u201csilent or ambiguous\u201d on the question of whether a slayer can benefit by inheriting ERISA funds. It noted that federal courts had long applied the \u201cslayer rule\u201d in the 19th century in insurance cases and that the federal courts in the 20th century had followed suit. The Sixth Circuit assumed that Congress, in passing the ERISA statute, \u201clegislated with an expectation\u201d that longstanding common law rules would apply unless the statute provided otherwise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>common law preventing a son from inheriting pension benefit funds in a plan managed by ERISA (Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974) when he murdered his parent. Standard Ins. co. v. Guy, 115 F.4th 518 (6th Cir. 2024). The case seems to be replay of the famous opinion by the New York Court of Appeals in Riggs v. Palmer, 22 N.E. 188 (N.Y. 1889). The Riggs opinion has this famous quote: \u201cBut it never could have been [the lawmakers\u2019] intention that a donee who murdered the testator to make the will operative should have any benefit under it. If such a case had been present to their minds, and it had been supposed necessary to make some provision of law to meet it, it cannot be doubted that they would have provided for it.\u201d The Sixth Circuit viewed ERISA as \u201csilent or ambiguous\u201d on the question of whether a &hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"> <a class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/2025\/04\/06\/seventh-circuit-adopts-a-slayer-rule-for-inheritance-of-erisa-benefits\/\"> <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Seventh Circuit adopts a slayer rule for inheritance of ERISA benefits<\/span> Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wills-and-inheritance"],"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"jsinger","author_link":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/author\/jsinger\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faculty.law.harvard.edu\/joseph-singer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}