Carter v. Office of Personnel Management

Alan Carter was a federal employee at the time that he and Karen Kay Carter divorced. We will call them by their first names for simplicity. A state-court “domestic relations order” at the time provided expressly for an allocation of any “former spouse survivor annuity” that Karen might receive upon Alan’s death, referring expressly to the statutory provision authorizing such an annuity, 5 U.S.C. § 8341(h). The order awarded Karen the “maximum possible former spouse survivor annuity under the Civil Service Retirement System in the same amount to which Karen Kay Carter would have been entitled…