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“During any period in which the issue of whether a domestic relations order is a qualified domestic relations order is being determined . . . the plan administrator shall separately account for the amounts (hereinafter in this subparagraph referred to as the ‘segregated amounts’) which would have been payable to the alternate payee during such period if the order had been determined to be a qualified domestic relations order.” §1056(d)(3)(H)(i).
Thus it is clear that subparagraph (H) speaks of a domestic relations order that distributes certain benefits (the “segregated amounts”) to an alternate payee, when the question for the plan administrator is whether the order is effective as a QDRO. That is the circumstance in which, for want of a QDRO, clause (iii) tells the plan administrator not to pay the alternate, but to distribute the segregated amounts as if there had been no order. Clause (iii) does not, as DuPont suggests, state a general rule that a non-QDRO domestic relations order is a nullity in any proceeding that would affect the determination of a beneficiary. And of course clause (iii) says nothing here at all; the divorce decree names no alternate payee, and there are consequently no “segregated amounts.”
Third, DuPont claims that a plan cannot recognize a waiver of benefits in a non-QDRO divorce decree because ERISA preempts “any and all State laws insofar as they may now or hereafter relate to any employee benefit plan,” with “State law” being defined to include “decisions” or “other State action having the effect of law.”9 §§1144(a), (c)(1). DuPont says that Liv’s waiver, expressed in a state-court decision and related to an employee benefit plan, is thus preempted. But recognizing a waiver in a divorce decree would not be giving effect to state law; the argument is that the waiver should be treated as a creature of federal common law, in which case its setting in a state divorce decree would be only happenstance. A court would merely be applying federal law to a document that might also have independent significance under state law. See, e.g., Melton v. Melton, 324 F. 3d 941, 945–946 (CA7 2003); Clift v. Clift, 210 F. 3d 268, 271–272 (CA5 2000); Lyman Lumber Co. v. Hill, 877 F. 2d 692, 693–694 (CA8 1989).
III
The waiver’s escape from inevitable nullity under the express terms of the antialienation clause does not, however, control the decision of this case, and the question remains whether the plan administrator was required to honor Liv’s waiver with the consequence of distributing the SIP balance to the Estate.10 We hold that it was not, and that the plan administrator did its statutory ERISA duty by paying the benefits to Liv in conformity with the plan documents.
ERISA requires “[e]very employee benefit plan [to] be established and maintained pursuant to a written instrument,” 29 U. S. C. §1102(a)(1), “specify[ing] the basis on which payments are made to and from the plan,” §1102(b)(4). The plan administrator is obliged to act “in accordance with the documents and instruments governing the plan insofar as such documents and instruments are consistent with the provisions of [Title I] and [Title IV] of [ERISA],”§1104(a)(1)(D), and the Act provides no exemption from this duty when it comes time to pay benefits. On the contrary, §1132(a)(1)(B) (which the Estate happens to invoke against DuPont here) reinforces the directive, with its provision that a participant or beneficiary may bring a cause of action “to recover benefits due to him under the terms of his plan, to enforce his rights under the terms of the plan, or to clarify his rights to future benefits under the terms of the plan.”
The Estate’s claim therefore stands or falls by “the terms of the plan,” §1132(a)(1)(B), a straightforward rule of hewing to the directives of the plan documents that lets employers “ ‘establish a uniform administrative scheme, [with] a set of standard procedures to guide processing of claims and disbursement of benefits.’ ”11