Lack v. Lack’s Empirical Analysis
1979
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 3 state decisions
Relationships
Relies on 15 Cal. 3d 838 - In Re Marriage of Brown · 6 Cal. 3d 461 - Waite v. Waite · 60 Cal. 2d 355 - Benson v. City of Los Angeles · Cearley v. Cearley · City of Dallas v. Trammell
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 5 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[s]ince the pension rights in question are wholly statutory, the legislature could designate the beneficiaries to whom death benefits are payable, and it has done so by limiting such benefits to widows so long as they remain unmarried and to children so long as they remain unmarried and are under 18 years of age.... [A]ny inchoate interest of a spouse of a participant never ripens into a community property interest until occurrence of the contingency on which that interest depends.... [T]hus, since the right to death benefits can never be established until the death of the participant, such benefits are not property acquired during the marriage, and therefore, are not community property.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.