A. Present Value
To produce a figure that can appropriately be attached to a defined benefit pension for equalization purposes requires that its “present value” (sometimes called “present-day capitalized value”)[11] be determined. The present value of a stream of payments that are to begin at some point in the future may be thought of as the amount that one would have to invest today so that as of the date the payments begin the original investment plus accumulated earnings would be exactly sufficient to cover all of the payments as they come due. In the particular context of marriage breakdown and defined benefit pensions, the present value as of the valuation date is the amount that would have to have been invested on that date in order for the original investment and accumulated earnings to be just adequate to fund the monthly benefits when the pension comes into pay.[12] Of course, this figure is necessarily the product of conjecture. The person performing the valuation[13] does not know on the valuation date when the pension payments will begin (given that the date of retirement is unknown on that date) or even whether they ever will begin (given the possibility that the employee will die first) or if they do begin, how long they will last (given that the date of death is unknown), nor does he or she know how much any given investment will ultimately earn (given that tomorrow’s interest rates and inflation levels are unknown); lacking omniscience concerning the future, the valuator must make assumptions about all of these variables.[14] As the Supreme Court of Canada has noted, ascertaining a present value is “a matter of educated guesswork, undertaken by actuaries”.[15]
B. Methods of Valuation
Although there seems to be little doubt today that the present value approach is to be preferred over the contributions approach in valuing rights under a defined benefit pension plan,[16] at least some uncertainty regarding the methodology used to calculate a present value continues to exist. Neither the FLA nor the Pension Benefits Act[17] (PBA) provides any guidance as to how pension rights should be valued for purposes of calculating net family property;[18] therefore, the question of how it should be done has been left to be answered by the parties, their lawyers and pension valuators (and ultimately, the courts). Debate on the issue has typically been framed as a matter of whether to use the “retirement method” or the “termination method”.[19] However, there is some considerable ambiguity in these terms, and it is not always clear what a court means when it declares that one or the other method is being utilized. Indeed, it has been suggested that in many cases in which the termination method was ostensibly used, the method that was actually being employed was the “real interest retirement method” (also known as the “hybrid termination-retirement method”).
C. Retirement Method v. Termination Method
The retirement method assumes that the employee will continue in his or her employment with the plan sponsor until reaching some specified retirement age selected by the valuator; accordingly, the basis on which the value is calculated includes projections as to future salary increases, both those that are rooted in inflation and those that are based on promotion or productivity increases, as well as future service credit accruals and possible pension plan enhancements. In contrast, under the termination method, the amount of the future pension entitlement is said to be assessed as if the pension plan member had terminated his or her employment on the valuation date. This means that only those service credits accrued to the valuation date are taken into account; it would also seem to imply that no consideration is given to the possibility of salary increases that may occur after that date.
If one goes strictly by the labels employed by Ontario courts to describe their preferences in valuation methodology, the termination method seems generally to have found much more favour than the retirement method, although the view that it represents the better approach is by no means universal. (Indeed, the Supreme Court of Canada has raised the possibility that the retirement method might provide an appropriate result in at least some circumstances.[20])
Two main arguments have been advanced in support of the termination method over the retirement method. The first is that by projecting salary levels and service credits that will be earned after separation, the retirement method gives the non-member spouse the “fruits” of the member spouse’s post-separation labours and is therefore in conflict with the FLA requirement that value be determined as of the valuation date.[21] How valid an objection this is can be debated. While the retirement method undeniably looks to post-separation events (or, rather, assumptions about post-separation events), the “years of service” multiplier used in a defined benefit plan formula does not assign any greater weight to the final years of the member’s time with the plan sponsor than to the early years[22] (although the dollar multiplicand employed in the formula obviously would be based on projected post-separation salary levels).
The second principal objection to the retirement method concerns its highly speculative nature, resulting from the fact that it requires the making of assumptions as to what the member spouse’s salary and service credits will be when he or she does retire.[23] These assumptions will virtually never have a perfect correspondence with future facts as they unfold and they may not even be close. Still, the termination method also involves the making of many assumptions. In order to produce a present value, the termination method, like the retirement method, must employ assumptions about when (and if[24]) the member spouse will retire and about how long he or she will collect the pension; assumptions are also made about future rates of interest and taxation. Any of these assumptions could turn out to be “incorrect”, in the sense that events might unfold differently than was assumed; and, in fact, they will almost certainly prove to be so in any individual case, notwithstanding their validity from an actuarial point of view. And, if the assumptions made do turn out to be wrong, the actual value of the pension benefit and the value it had been considered to have had for equalization purposes could deviate quite dramatically, to the great disadvantage of one or the other spouse. For example, if the member spouse ends up collecting the pension for a longer period than that on which the valuation was based, the actual value of the pension rights may end up exceeding, perhaps by a quite considerable amount, that which was attributed to them as net family property.
D. Do the Courts Really Favour the Termination Method?
In Bascello v.