Excerpt: Although the SERP was presumably a defined benefit arrangement, the court concluded that ERISA's qualified joint and survivor annuity rules, which require a participant's spouse's consent to the election of a form of benefit other than a QJSA, did not apply. That was because the SERP was a top hat plan, and top hat plans are not subject to ERISA's survivor annuity rules. (The United Way actually denied that a SERP existed and maintained instead that the $2 million was paid pursuant to a separation agreement, but the court assumed for purposes of its ruling that a SERP did exist.)  MORE >>