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[1] R.S.O. 1990, c. F.3.
[2] Section 4 of the FLA defines “valuation date” as the earliest of the separation date, the date of divorce, the date the marriage is declared a nullity, the date an application is made for an order based on a danger of improvident depletion of family property under subsection 5(3) and the day before the date of a spouse’s death.
[3] See the definition of “net family property” in subsection 4(1) of the FLA.
[4] FLA, subsection 4(5).
[5] See for example, section 56 of British Columbia’s Family Relations Act, R.S.B.C. 1996, Chapter 128.
[6] The specific inclusion of pension rights in the FLA definition of “property” may be contrasted with the situation that had prevailed under the former FLRA, where pension rights were not mentioned in the definition of “family assets” and the courts had concluded that they were not subject to the FLRA provisions requiring equal division of such assets. (See, for example, St. Germain v. St. Germain (1980), 14 R.F.L. (2d) 186 (O.C.A.).) Whether the FLRA case law on this point was in fact sound seems doubtful, however, in light of the later Supreme Court of Canada decision in Clarke v. Clarke (1990), 73 D.L.R. (4th) 1, which held that a right under a pension plan was “matrimonial property” for purposes of Nova Scotia’s family law legislation, even though that legislation did not expressly address the question of pensions.
[7] See, for example, Nix v. Nix (1987), 11 R.F.L. (3d) 9 (O.H.C.)
[8] James MacDonald and Ann Wilton, The 2008 Annotated Ontario Family Law Act (Thomson Carswell, 2007), p. 71. See, for example, Ward v. Ward (1988), 13 R.F.L. (3d) 173 (O.H.C.); Flynn v. Flynn (1989), 20 R.F.L. (3d) 173; Bascello v. Bascello (1995), 26 O.R. (3d) 342, [1995] O. J. No. 2989 (O.C.[G.D.]); and Green v. Green (2007), 38 R.F.L. (6th) 378, [2007] O.J. 454 (O.S.C.J.). Interestingly, the latter case shows that the question of whether unvested rights are property can still loom large despite the relatively short vesting period for post-1986 service provided for in the PBA, as Green dealt with a supplementary employee retirement plan which had vesting requirements that were much stricter than those set out in the PBA.
[9] See Berend Hovius and Timothy G. Youdan, The Law of Family Property (Carswell, 1991), p. 478, n. 34.
[10] One expert has suggested that a pension in a defined benefit plan is frequently worth two to two and one-half times the contributions; see Thomas G. Anderson, “Pensions” in Federation of Law Societies of Canada 2006 National Family Law Program, p. 32.
[11] Jack Patterson, Pension Divison and Valuation: Family Lawyers’ Guide (2nd ed.) (Canada Law Book Inc.), p. 21.
[12] Patterson, note 11, pp. 21-22.
[13] This will usually be an actuary or someone with training in property valuation.
[14] The Canadian Institute of Actuaries Standards of Practice (2008) contain “recommendations” that Fellows of the Institute are generally required to follow. (There is a presumption that a deviation from a recommendation is a deviation from accepted actuarial practice.) Section 4330 of the Standards sets out rules governing the choice of interest rates and provides that actuaries (subject to some qualification) “should assume death rates in accordance with a mortality table prescribed by the Institute’s Practice Standards Council”. The currently-prescribed tables are “GAM-83” (the 1983 Group Annuity Mortality Table), Male or Female as applicable, which was developed from insurance industry data and was until fairly recently commonly used for valuation in solvency and going concern reports filed with pension plan regulators. The LCO understands that both the rules governing the choice of interest rates and the use of GAM-83 are currently under review.
[15] Boston v. Boston, [2001] 2 S.C.R. 413, at para. 32. It should be noted that while solvency valuations of a defined benefit pension plan must be performed by a fellow of the Canadian Institute of Actuaries (see section 14 of the General Regulation under the PBA [R.R.O. 1990, Regulation 909] and the definition of “actuary” in section 1 of the Regulation), there is no requirement in Ontario that a valuation of a spouse’s interest in a pension plan for family law purposes be performed by a fellow of the Institute, and some such valuations are in fact performed by non-actuaries.
[16] Some cases decided shortly after the coming into force of the FLA used the contributions approach in valuing rights under a defined benefit plan, but expert opinion seems to be unanimous in holding that that approach is generally inappropriate; see Hovius and Youdan, note 9, pp. 494-497; Ian J. McSweeney and Douglas Rienzo, Pensions and the Family Law Act: Valuation and Settlement of Pensions and Similar Employee Benefits on Marriage Breakdown (Law Society of Upper Canada (Bar Admission Course), 2005), p. 485; Patterson, note 11, p. 58. One may infer that the Supreme Court of Canada is of the view that the present value approach is the preferred approach for defined benefit pensions from the discussion of the differences between defined contribution plans and defined benefit plans at paragraphs 29 to 33 of the Court’s decision in Best v. Best, [1999] 2 S.C.R. 868 and from its approval of the termination method and (as an alternative in some situations) the retirement method, both of which are present value approaches.
[17] R.S.O. 1990, c. P.8
[18] Section 56 of the General Regulation under the PBA (R.R.O. 1990, Regulation 909) prescribes a method of valuation for purposes of the “fifty per cent” rule in subsection 51(2) of the PBA, but while this can be relevant to the question of how the equalization requirement should be satisfied once the net family properties of the spouses have been determined, it is not prescribed as the method for determining value for net family property purposes and generally has not been used for such purposes.
[19] See, for example, Ari N. Kaplan, Pension Law (Irwin Law, 2006), p. 305.
[20] Best v. Best, note 16, paras. 88-93. In discussing the possibility that the retirement method might be used in some cases, the Court seemed to suggest that it would be appropriate where the likely retirement date was fairly close at the time of valuation, as there would be a lesser degree of speculation than in the case where retirement would probably only occur at a more remote date.
[21] Humphreys v. Humphreys (1987), 7 R.F.L. (3d) 113, at p. 121 (O.H.C.J.).
[22] This seems to be the point being made by certain judicial authorities and other sources cited in Hovius and Youdan, note 9, p. 501.
[23] Humphreys v. Humphreys, note 21, at p. 121.
[24] The member may die without having retired and come into receipt of a pension. E. Diane Pask and Cheryl A. Hass, state in Division of Pensions (Carswell, 1990), p. V-9, state that mortality can be ignored for valuation purposes if the pension plan in question provides a death benefit equal to 100 per cent of the commuted value of the pension to which the member is entitled. In that regard, section 48 of the PBA requires a pre-retirement death benefit equal to the commuted value of the pension, but requires the value to be determined as of the termination (death) date; this of course means that it provides 100 per cent of the value of the pension only if one is applying a strict termination method which, as is discussed below, is not what courts purporting to apply the termination method are typically doing when determining a value for rights under a defined benefit plan.
[25] Note 8.
[26] The real interest method takes its name from the fact that it allows for inflation by employing a discount based on the difference between nominal interest rates and nominal rates of inflation, which over the long term has been relatively constant despite whatever fluctuations were occurring in the nominal rates. See Patterson, note 11, pp 127-128.
[27] Ironically, the Bascello court used the real interest retirement method even though the case before it involved a private sector plan that was not indexed. The court’s reasoning was that the plan sponsor would have to fund the plan at a level sufficient to ensure ability to pay pensions based on the plan members’ highest years of earnings; however, as Patterson, note 11, p. 175 and p. 194, observes, actuarial valuation for plan funding purposes is not based on the same principles as valuation of the interest of an individual member for marriage breakdown purposes. In the case of the latter, for plans that are not indexed, actuaries would typically use a higher discount rate reflecting predicted market rates rather than the real interest rate, which results in a lower value than a discount based on real interest rates: see Patterson, note 11, p. 173.
[28] Her age and years of service at valuation date adding up only to sixty-six, with her years of service treated as frozen, the employee would not achieve factor ninety for another twenty-four years, at which time she would be sixty-nine years old, four years past the normal retirement date.
[29] The employee’s age and years of service at valuation date add up to sixty-six; if she continues in her employment to age fifty-seven, she will at that time have thirty-three years of service.
[30] See, for example, Deroo v. Deroo (1990), 28 R.F.L. (3d) 211 (O.S.C.).
[31] See, for example, Weise v. Weise (1992), 99 D.L.R. (4th) 524, 12 O. R. (23d) 492 (O.C. [G.D.]. Such a discount might not be allowed where the possibility of pre-retirement termination is viewed as remote: Alger v. Alger (1989), 21