Ontario’s budget received royal assent last week and that means plans to create the Ontario Retirement Pension Plan (ORPP) will go ahead.
The budget also included changes to the Pension Benefits Act (PBA) to address the decision of the Ontario Court of Appeal in Carrigan v. Carrigan Estate.
In that case, a plan member who died was married but separated from his wife and in a conjugal relationship with someone else. Neither was entitled to the death benefit.
“Changes to s. 48 of the PBA clarify that in circumstances where a pension plan member is legally married to a spouse from whom he or she is separated, is living with a new spouse in a common law conjugal relationship, and dies prior to retirement, the common law spouse will be entitled to the pre-retirement death benefit,” writes Douglas Rienzo on Osler’s Pensions & Benefits Law blog.
“Similar amendments to s. 44 of the act clarify that where a pension plan member is legally married to a spouse from whom he or she is separated, is living with a new spouse in a common law conjugal relationship, and the plan member commences a pension, the pension must be paid in a joint-and-survivor form (with the survivor pension payable to the common law spouse should he or she survive the member), unless the member and the common law spouse waive this form of pension,” he writes.
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