PROFESSOR PRINCE’S “VESTING VILLAINY” ARTICLE TO BE PUBLISHED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA JOURNAL OF BUSINESS LAW
April 2025 — “Vesting Villainy: The Call to Eliminate 401(k) Plan Vesting Schedules” written by Professor Samantha Prince, has been accepted for fall publication by the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Business Law.
The article covers the devastating policy implications of empirical data presented in her co-authored article, “The Effects of 401(k) Vesting Schedules — in Numbers” published by The Yale Law Journal Forum. Ultimately, this article leads the charge for eliminating vesting schedules from 401(k) plans while using corporate villains such as Amazon and Home Depot as examples in support of such elimination.
The American employee’s efforts to accumulate retirement wealth have been stunted by 401(k) vesting schedules for over half a century, yet vesting schedules continue to be legally permissible and pervasively used. Astronomical numbers of American employees that annually lost their employer contributions due to vesting schedules was over 1.8 million across 909 plans in 2022 alone. Additionally, in 2022, employers recycled the use of over $1.5 billion in retirement money that employees forfeited.
Many private-sector workers in the United States rely on 401(k) plans to accumulate retirement wealth. This Article discusses how the current laws governing 401(k) plans flout retirement policy and are putting millions of Americans’ retirement security at risk.
“Vesting Villainy” complements Prince’s other work on 401(k) plans including “Megacompany Employee Churn Meets 401(k) Vesting Schedules: A Sabotage on Workers’ Retirement Wealth” published by Yale Law & Policy Review, “The Effects of 401(k) Vesting Schedules — in Numbers” (mentioned above) published by The Yale Law Journal Forum, “Benefits Transparency,” published by Marquette Law Review, (where she called for more transparency through mandatory disclosure of 401(k) plan details); and, “Benefits Washing,” published by the Georgetown Law Journal Online (where she shows examples of companies that “wash” their 401(k) plan details including vesting schedules).
Professor Samantha Prince is an Associate Professor of Law and Director of Legal Analysis & Writing at Dickinson Law. She has a Master of Laws in Taxation from Georgetown University Law Center and was a partner in a regional law firm where she handled transactional matters that ranged from an initial public offering to regular representation of a publicly-traded company. A significant part of her practice was in employee benefits including retirement plan design and operation. Her expertise from practice has fueled her research enabling her to become an expert on 401(k) vesting schedules, employee benefits transparency, and gig work. In practice, most of her clients were small to medium sized businesses and entrepreneurs, including start-ups. Professor Prince brought her practice knowledge to the law school and established the Dickinson Law entrepreneurship program. She is an advisor for the Entrepreneurship Law Certificate that is available to students and is the founder and moderator of the Inside Entrepreneurship Law blog.