Zander v. Zander’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

12 state decisions

Most-quoted passages

The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 12 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““ ‘In deciding whether retirement benefits should be divided at the time of dissolution or upon future receipt by the employee spouse, the trial court should consider the advantages and disadvantages of each method in light of the facts of the particular case before it. “Division of retirement benefits at the time of divorce has the obvious advantage of avoiding the continuing jurisdiction of the court in order to [ensure] that the appropriate payments are made to the non-employee spouse upon receipt of pension benefits by the employee spouse. This method is preferred where there are sufficient assets available at the time of divorce to divide the present value of the retirement benefits without causing an undue hardship to either spouse and where testimony and valuation is not unduly speculative. “A second method requires the determination of a fixed percentage for the non-employee spouse of any future payments the employee receives under the plan, payable when paid to the employee. This method ... has the advantage of making it unnecessary to determine the present value of the pension fund. The fixed percentage method should be used where present value determinations are unacceptably speculative or there are not enough assets to equitably require that benefits due in the future be split presently.”’”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. Van Oosting v. Van Oosting