## Facts

- Husband and wife divorced in Texas; during the marriage, the husband worked for his employer for about 22 years and participated in the employer’s pension and retirement plan.
- The divorce decree did not dispose of the husband’s pension and retirement benefits earned during the marriage.
- After the divorce, the wife filed a separate suit to partition the community property that had not been divided, seeking her share of the retirement benefits attributable to the marriage.
- The trial court determined that the portion of the retirement benefits earned during marriage was community property that remained undivided and therefore subject to partition.
- The trial court awarded the wife a percentage interest in the husband’s future retirement benefits, payable when the benefits became payable.
- The husband appealed, arguing that the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) preempted Texas community-property law and barred the state court from dividing the plan benefits.

## Issues

1. Do ERISA’s preemption and anti-alienation provisions preempt Texas community-property law and prohibit a Texas court from partitioning and awarding a former spouse a share of an ERISA-governed pension that was not disposed of in the divorce decree?

## Decision

- The court held that ERISA did not preempt Texas community-property law in a way that would bar a post-divorce partition recognizing the wife’s community interest in the retirement benefits.
- The court treated the partition decree as an adjudication of ownership interests between former spouses, not as state regulation of the pension plan itself.
- The court rejected the argument that the award was an impermissible “assignment or alienation,” reasoning that the decree recognized the wife’s own community ownership in benefits earned during marriage.
- The trial court’s judgment awarding the wife a percentage of the future retirement benefits attributable to the marriage was affirmed.

## Legal Principles

- In Texas, retirement benefits earned during marriage are community property to the extent they are based on employment during the marriage.
- Community property not disposed of in a divorce decree remains owned by the former spouses and may be divided later in a separate partition action.
- ERISA’s preemption clause does not bar a state court from applying state marital-property law to determine and enforce the respective ownership interests of former spouses in retirement benefits.
- A partition award to a former spouse of the community share of pension benefits is treated as recognition of an existing ownership interest, not a prohibited assignment by the plan participant.

## Conclusion

Ryan v. Ryan holds that when a Texas divorce decree fails to dispose of an ERISA-governed pension earned during marriage, the omitted community asset may later be partitioned, and ERISA does not preempt the state court’s authority to recognize and award the former spouse a percentage of the benefits attributable to the marriage; the partition judgment was affirmed.


Ryan v. Ryan, 626 S.W.2d 103 (1981)