Spousal consent forgery

[austin3515]

A plan that does not require spousal consent obtained spousal consent for a plan distribution. Three interesting twists:

1) The participant also happens to be the owner/sponsor of the Company.

2) The participant forged the spouse's signature

3) He is now getting a divorce.

He has obviously already spent the money and wants to avoid the court saying something along the lines of, "well obviously the spouses consent was required... as such fork over half of the dough."

I'll settle for thoughts on the legal effect of obtaining a spousal consent when not necessary.

Any thoughts?

[david rigby]

If the plan does not require spousal consent, why does anyone care about a (possible) forgery?

More interesting might be whether there was a distributable event under the plan.

[Brian Gallagher]

I don't see any problem with it, especially if the spousal consent is NOT needed.

To me, it's like forging a note from your wife allowing you to see an R-rated movie. Sure, you forged the note, but you never really needed it in the first place.

(in my totally, UNLEGAL opinion)

What might need to be looked at is the timing related to the divorce. In not sure what responsibility a sponsor has to stop a distribution if he/she knows a divorce is going on (even before it's been finalized).

[E as in ERISA]

Is this the only situation in which spousal consent was ever requested? Or are you just saying that this is plan is not one that was required to obtain spousal consent, but it is one of their procedures to do so? If it is the latter, then they should apply their procedures on a nondiscriminatory basis.