Sponsors (13)
The bill strengthens legal spousal protections and funds targeted grant programs and consumer resources to improve retirement security for women and retirees, but it increases federal spending and creates new compliance burdens, potential delays in access to funds, and risks that grants and mandates may favor larger organizations or fail to deliver measurable outcomes.
Spouses of plan participants (often middle-class families and surviving spouses) will get stronger legal protections: rollovers and full distributions generally require spousal consent or specified protections, and individuals gain a private right to sue to enforce those protections.
Women (working-age and retired) will receive targeted, federally funded financial literacy and retirement-planning education through community organizations, improving their ability to save and plan for retirement.
Low-income women and survivors of domestic violence will gain funded local legal and financial assistance to prepare and obtain QDROs, increasing their access to retirement benefits and reducing future reliance on safety-net programs.
Taxpayers will fund recurring federal programs: the bill appropriates roughly $100M/year for financial literacy grants and $100M/year for legal/QDRO assistance, increasing federal spending by about $200M annually.
Employers and plan sponsors (including small businesses) will face new compliance, recordkeeping, and administrative costs from spousal-consent rules and retroactive amendment requirements, costs that may be passed on to participants through higher fees.
Plan participants who need quick access to funds (parents, people with disabilities, those separated) may be delayed or blocked from distributions because consent formalities (witness/notary, 90‑day consent window) and narrow exceptions can slow access.
Based on analysis of 7 sections of legislative text.
Requires spousal consent rules for most defined contribution distributions, adds ERISA enforcement, mandates CFPB education links, and funds grants for women's retirement literacy and QDRO assistance.
Official title: Amend the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 to provide for greater spousal protection under defined contribution plans, and for other purposes.
Introduced March 12, 2025 by Tammy Baldwin · Last progress March 12, 2025
Adds legal spousal-consent protections for individual account and defined contribution retirement plans, creates enforcement rights for spouses, and changes plan qualification rules so plans must meet the new consent standards. Requires retirement product providers to link to CFPB retirement-education materials. Creates two Labor Department competitive grant programs (one to improve women’s financial literacy and retirement security; one to help low-income women and survivors of domestic violence obtain and implement QDROs), each with minimum grant sizes and annual authorizations of $100 million beginning FY2026.