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June 07, 2004 at 08:00 PM
NU Online News Service, June 7, 2004, 7:01 p.m. EDT – The U.S. Supreme Court may decide whether debtors have a clear right to protect ordinary individual retirement accounts from bankruptcy creditors.[@@]
The court has agreed to consider Rousey vs. Jacoway, a case originally heard in Arkansas.
The husband and wife involved in the case worked for an aerospace manufacturer. They eventually rolled about $55,000 in 401(k) plan assets into 2 IRAs at a local bank.
U.S. bankruptcy law refers to IRAs and seems to imply, indirectly, that bankruptcy law protects some or all IRA assets from creditors in addition to protecting 401(k) plan assets and other retirement plan assets, Circuit Judge David Hansen, a judge with the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, writes in an opinion released in October 2003.
But the 3-judge 8th Circuit panel argues that the law seems to exempt IRA and other retirement plan assets from the bankruptcy estate only when the debtors have trouble getting to the cash.
