Dennis v. Retirement System
Decision Date | 18 January 2006 |
Docket Number | No. 27, September Term, 2005.,27, September Term, 2005. |
Citation | 390 Md. 639,890 A.2d 737 |
Parties | Elmer DENNIS, et al. v. FIRE & POLICE EMPLOYEES' RETIREMENT SYSTEM, et al. |
Court | Court of Special Appeals of Maryland |
Michael Marshall (Schlachman, Belasky & Weiner, P.A., on brief) of Baltimore, for petitioners.
Wendy Widmann (Daneker, McIntire, Schumm, Prince, Goldstein, Manning & Widmann, P.C., Abraham M. Schwartz on brief) of Baltimore, for respondents.
Argued before BELL, C.J., RAKER, WILNER, CATHELL, HARRELL, BATTAGLIA and GREENE, JJ.
Appellants, both former Baltimore City police officers, ask this Court to determine whether payments of deferred retirement option plan ("DROP") retirement benefits from the Baltimore City Fire and Police Employees' Retirement System ("the Retirement System") are "pension" payments within the meaning of the Qualified Domestic Relations Orders ("QDROs") entered in appellants' divorces, entitling the appellee spouses to a portion of the DROP payments in accordance with the terms of the QDROs. We shall hold that the DROP payments are "pension" payments under the QDROs, and that consequently the appellee spouses are entitled to their shares of the DROP payments under the QDROs.
Appellants, Elmer Dennis and Edmund Lubinski, are retired Baltimore City police officers. Appellees Catherine Dennis and Edna Sullivan are the former spouses of Elmer Dennis and Edmund Lubinski, respectively. The Retirement System and the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore are also appellees in this action.
Lubinski and Sullivan were divorced by a Judgment of Absolute Divorce entered on February 22, 1990. The judgment was entered in accordance with an agreement reached by the parties. It provided as follows:
(emphasis added).
Elmer Dennis and Catherine Dennis were divorced by a Judgment of Absolute Divorce entered on June 7, 1993. The judgment was apparently entered by the court without the agreement of the parties.1 The judgment contained a provision similar to that in the Lubinski judgment:
(emphasis added).
Elmer Dennis began work at the Baltimore City Police Department on September 24, 1964, and Lubinski began work at the Department on January 24, 1963. Both began participation in the DROP on August 1, 1996, and ceased participation on July 31, 1999. Both continued to work at the Department after participating in the DROP, with Elmer Dennis retiring on September 2, 2002, and Lubinski retiring on February 9, 2001.
The Retirement System notified appellants by letter dated January 20, 1999, that it intended to treat payments of their DROP benefits as subject to division between them and their spouses in accordance with the formula specified in their QDROs. In response, appellants, along with other Baltimore City police officers, filed a Complaint in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City, seeking injunctive relief. This Complaint, the subject of a previous appeal to this Court, Brown v. Retirement System, 375 Md. 661, 826 A.2d 525 (2003), set out the facts relating to this Complaint as follows:
Id. at 665, 668-69, 826 A.2d at 527-30 (footnotes omitted). In Brown, we held that the Circuit Court erred in reaching the merits of the Complaint, as the petitioners had failed to exhaust their administrative remedies. Id. at 673-74, 826 A.2d at 532-33. Consequently, we vacated the judgment of the Court of Special Appeals, and remanded with instructions to vacate the lower court judgments and dismiss the case. Id. at 674-75, 826 A.2d at 533.
After our decision in Brown, appellants filed claims with the Fire and Police Employees' Retirement System Board of Trustees ("the Board"), challenging the Retirement System's treatment of their DROP benefits as subject to division under their QDROs. Pursuant to Article 22, § 41 of the Baltimore City Code (2000), a hearing was held on appellants' claims on August 28, 2003. The Board then denied their claims, concluding that "[t]he DROP benefit is an integral part of the [Retirement System] benefit scheme" and that appellants' "DROP accounts must be assigned to their ex-spouses under their deferred division divorce decrees."
Appellants then filed a Petition for a Writ of Mandamus and Complaint for Declaratory Relief and/or Petition for Judicial Review in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City. Appellants sought judicial review of the Board's decision pursuant to Md. Rule 7-202, a declaratory judgment that appellants' DROP benefits should be disbursed in full to appellants, and a writ of mandamus ordering the Board to so disburse their DROP benefits. After the appellee spouses intervened in the action, the parties filed cross-motions for summary judgment. Ruling on these motions, the court declared that "the DROP is subject to the deferred division stated in the parties' Judgments of Divorce as a matter of law," affirmed the decision of the Board of Trustees of the Retirement System, and denied appellants' petition for a writ of mandamus.
The appellants then noted timely appeals to the Court of Special Appeals. We granted appellants' petition for a writ of certiorari prior to decision in the Court of Special Appeals. Dennis v. Fire Retirement, 387 Md. 465, 875 A.2d 769 (2005).
In Brown, we detailed the operation of the Retirement System and the DROP as follows:
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