IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA
No. 20-0556
Filed November 4, 2020
IN RE THE MARRIAGE OF THOMAS DEAN NICHOLS
AND TERESA LORRAINE NICHOLS
Upon the Petition of
THOMAS DEAN NICHOLS,
Petitioner-Appellant,
And Concerning
TERESA LORRAINE NICHOLS, n/k/a TERESA LORRAINE JOHNSON,
Respondent-Appellee.
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Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Black Hawk County, Linda M.
Fangman, Judge.
Thomas Nichols appeals the denial of his application to amend a qualified
domestic relations order. AFFIRMED.
Kevin D. Engels of Correll, Sheerer, Benson, Engels, Galles & Demro, PLC,
Cedar Falls, for appellant.
Jamie L. Schroeder of The Sayer Law Group, P.C., Waterloo, for appellee.
Considered by Doyle, P.J., and Mullins and Greer, JJ. Bower, C.J., takes
no part.
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MULLINS, Judge.
Thomas Nichols and Teresa Johnson married on October 20, 1984. They
separated on October 16, 1995, and the marriage was dissolved on May 19, 1997.
The dissolution decree memorialized Thomas’s agreement that one-half of his
Iowa Public Employees’ Retirement System (IPERS) pension “benefits up to the
time of the parties’ separation shall be awarded to” Teresa. The court ordered the
parties to file proposed qualified domestic relations orders (QDRO) for the court’s
approval “to allow [Teresa] to receive one-half of the IPERS retirement plan from
the time that [Thomas] joined the plan until the parties’ separation.” The court
directed the following calculation:
[Teresa] shall receive 50 percent of a fraction of [Thomas’s] pension
and pension payments. The numerator of this fraction shall be the
number of years [Thomas] contributed to IPERS during the marriage,
and the denominator of the fraction shall be the total number of years
during which benefits were accumulated prior to being paid.
The ensuing QDRO included the following provision:
IPERS is directed to pay benefits to [Teresa] as a marital property
settlement under the following formula: 50% of the gross monthly or
lump sum benefit payable at the date of distribution to [Thomas]. The
forgoing percentage shall be multiplied by the “service factor.” The
“service factor” is a fraction of which the numerator is the quarters of
service covered by IPERS between October 20, 198[4][1] and
October 16, 1995, and the denominator is [Thomas’s] total quarters
of service covered by IPERS.
In 2019, Thomas filed an application to amend the QDRO. He claimed:
Due to changes in the manner in which IPERS now calculates the
benefits for members of the system, the present calculation set forth
under the QDRO . . . will result in [Teresa] receiving a share of
[Thomas’s] IPERS benefit for a period of time when [Thomas] worked
1 The order provided the year 1980, which appears to be a typo. The supposed
typo is inconsequential, as Thomas did not begin IPERS-covered employment until
1987.
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for IPERS covered employment while [Thomas] will not receive a
similar share of those benefits.
The matter proceeded to hearing, at which the following evidence was
presented. Thomas began his employment with Black Hawk County as a jail
security officer on October 5, 1987. He served in that position for just under three
years, and he was promoted to deputy sheriff on September 23, 1990. He has
worked in that capacity since. A few years back, Thomas learned that once he
accumulated twenty-two years of service as a deputy sheriff, his three years of
service as a jailer would not count as years of service for the purpose of calculating
his retirement benefits. Thomas also learned that IPERS interpreted the rules to
allow Teresa to receive benefits for the three years of jailer service. IPERS
explained to Thomas that Teresa would be entitled to her share of benefits
accruing during the marriage. Thomas testified to his position for amending the
QDRO: “[I]f I’m not getting credit for this time, I don’t feel that she should get credit
for that time.” He was seeking “equality.” He generally requested that the service
factor for the calculation of Teresa’s benefits be reduced to not account for the
quarters Thomas would not be entitled to. Ultimately, the court denied the
application to amend the QDRO and Thomas’s subsequent motion to reconsider,
enlarge, or amend. Thomas appeals.
Thomas requested the court to amend the QDRO to reflect the intent of the
decretal court in light of a change in the law concerning calculation of IPERS
benefits. Our analysis turns on the intent of the decretal court. See In re Marriage
of Heath-Clark, No. 15-0525, 2016 WL 2753779, at *4 (Iowa Ct. App. May 11,
2016). The QDRO awarded Teresa fifty percent of benefits payable upon
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distribution, multiplied by the service factor. The decretal court identified the
service factor to be the quarters of covered service between October 20, 1984
(when Thomas began covered employment) and October 16, 1995 (when the
parties separated), divided by the total quarters of covered service.
On appeal, Thomas argues the decretal court’s intent would be served by
reducing the service factor to reflect when benefits accumulated for Thomas as a
member, which ultimately would not include his three years as a jailer. But a
QDRO “is used to value and divide the portion of the defined benefit accrued during
the parties’ marriage.” Id. at *6 (quoting In re Marriage of Benson 545 N.W.2d 252,
255 (Iowa 1996)). Thomas agrees the decretal court’s “intention was to provide
[Teresa] with half of [Thomas’s] IPERS benefits that accumulated between the time
the parties were married and the time they separated.” Thomas asks that the
numerator of the service factor be reduced to not account for the three years he
was a jailer. But we find what happened after the dissolution of the marriage to be
irrelevant. “[T]he numerator [is] the number of years during the marriage [the
employee] accrued benefits under the pension plan . . . .” In re Marriage of Smith,
No. 16-0597, 2017 WL 362000, at *5 (Iowa Ct. App. Jan. 25, 2017) (alterations in
original) (quoting Benson, 545 N.W.2d at 255). The fact that the three years of
service were later lost to Thomas does not change what accumulated as a result
of the parties’ joint marital efforts prior to their separation. While the three years
as a jailer will not provide added value for Thomas at the end of the day, they
provided added value during the marriage. Further, it appears the reason the three
years were lost is because he earned greater benefits in his new employment
classification; but Teresa should not lose benefits because of his increase in
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benefits. The decretal court’s intent was that Teresa be entitled to benefits
accumulated during the marriage. The district court’s denial of Thomas’s
modification application was in accordance with that intent, so we affirm.2
AFFIRMED.
2 We are not presented with, and therefore render no direction or opinion on, any
future IPERS administrative action.