The FBI may say that “crime doesn’t pay,” but maybe it should be “crime doesn’t pay, if you get caught.” But if you do get caught, in Ohio at least, you will find that murder is not an effective strategy for a beneficiary to accelerate their inheritance. Even for ERISA plan beneficiaries.
ORC 2105.19, the so called “Slayer Statute,” makes it illegal for a person to financially benefit from an estate plan when the beneficiary has murdered the owner of the assets. The law is a bit nuanced, but that’s the long and short of it- any intentional killing of the asset owner and the murderer is treated as though they had pre-deceased the victim. At common law (meaning non-statutory case law precedent), this was the rule as well. Perhaps worth noting is that the forfeiture doesn’t occur unless the murderer is actually convicted.
Here’s the thing though, employer ERISA plans aren’t subject to Ohio’s Slayer Statute, because ERISA is a federal law and preempts (or supersedes) Ohio law. Adding a layer of complexity to be sure, but it seems that Ohio court’s interpreting the distribution of ERISA-assets will follow the contract language in the plan. If no surviving beneficiary is listed and the plan does not otherwise dictate how the proceeds will be disbursed, then the proceeds may become part of the victim’s estate.
In Ahmed v. Ahmed, tragically, a husband murdered his spouse. Under normal circumstances, the surviving spouse is the default contract beneficiary of an ERISA plan (unless modified), regardless of other estate planning to the contrary.
The appellate court determined it could not disburse the proceeds to the contingent beneficiary since the murderous husband was still alive and, under the contract, the contingent beneficiary only took if the husband was actually deceased. Under federal law, the husband was also not entitled to receive the proceeds, so the court had to determine what to do. In that case, the husband got skipped over, as did the contingent beneficiary under the ERISA plan. As such, the ERISA proceeds defaulted to the victim’s estate. Ahmed v. Ahmed et al., No. 3BE 65 (7th Dist. Ohio Ct. App. 2004). Who says estate planners can’t have Halloween-themed posts?
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