Nicholas (Nick) L. Saakvitne

Nicholas (Nick) L. Saakvitne, who passed away in 2018 at age 66, was a highly-respected West Coast pension attorney and professional fiduciary and trustee under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (“ERISA”). Nick was inducted as a Fellow of the American College of Employee Benefits Counsel (the “College”) in 2002.

Nick graduated from University of Massachusetts Amherst Commonwealth Honors College with a B.A. in 1973. Nick graduated in 1976 from New York University School of Law with a J.D. and in 1977 with an LL.M. in Taxation.

He started his career by becoming a member of the Massachusetts Bar in 1977, but moved to California around 1979. Initially, he worked at Reish and Luftman. College Fellow Fred Reish recalled that Nick was a traditional ERISA attorney doing qualified retirement plan work on both Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) and Department of Labor (“DOL”) issues.

Nick was owner of Saakvitne Law Corporation in Santa Monica, CA starting in the 1980s. (Fred Reish noted that after Nick left Fred’s firm, Nick had a boat in Marina Del Rey in Los Angeles and had his office on the boat.) The law firm specialized in pension law and over time in providing ERISA and Employee Stock Ownership Plan (“ESOP”) fiduciary services including trustee services, plan administrator services, independent fiduciary services for orphaned retirement plans (the plan sponsor was no longer in business and no longer administering the benefits), and ESOP fiduciary services.

Nick’s law practice was challenging and was very much in demand by plans caught up in difficulties: he was often appointed by boards of directors, bankruptcy trustees, and courts. By 2013, for example, he had acted as ERISA plan administrator and/or trustee for more than 500 employee benefit plans and overseen the payment of more than $1 billion in benefits. Many plans that came to his office for his services were "orphan plans." The impact of an orphaned or abandoned plan was critically felt by participants who failed to receive accrued benefits. Nick and his firm stepped up to help such plans.

Nick also acted as Independent Fiduciary for ERISA litigation settlement evaluations for the expanded categories of assets permitted in settlement under DOL Prohibited Transaction Exemption 2003-39 and for ERISA special projects and transactions.

Nick was active in helping shape guidance for orphaned or abandoned plans. Nick co-authored a May 4, 2005, Comment Letter to the DOL regarding proposed regulations on qualified termination administrators (“QTAs”) in which he described himself as a White Knight appointed by the DOL as an independent ERISA fiduciary to oversee the administration, termination and orderly liquidation of orphaned retirement plans. The Comment Letter gives a window to the complex and demanding world of an independent fiduciary as it notes a “myriad of issues that frequently arise (forfeiture allocation, fee allocation, missing participants, illiquid assets, IRS issues, EBSA [“Employee Benefits Security Administration”] inquiries, uncashed checks, participant death and divorce, contributions owed the plan, implementation of automatic IRA [“Individual Retirement Account/Annuity”] rollovers above and below $1,000, required purchase of joint and survivor annuities, etc.)”

An active member of his local Beverly Hills Bar Association, Nick acted as co-chair of the Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation Annual Conference for 1988-1989.

Practitioners recalled that Nick was ethical, kind, optimistic, very knowledgeable about the application of ERISA fiduciary rules, generous in sharing his time with other practitioners, and cared about the well-being of his clients.

Among his personal attributes, Nick was a skilled carpenter and boat captain, and voracious reader. As a “White Knight” coming to the aid of participants in abandoned plans, Nick worked to help plans get benefit distributions out of limbo and to the right recipients.

Photo Source: Photo Source: The Decade Book, American College of Employee Benefits Counsel 2000-2010