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STATE OF MICHIGAN
COURT OF APPEALS


JOANN ELIZABETH WALSH, Plaintiff-Appellant, v

UNPUBLISHED July 31, 2001

MICHAEL JOHN WALSH, Defendant-Appellee.

No. 222434 Macomb Circuit Court Family Division LC No. 98-000905

Before: Doctoroff, P.J., and Murphy and Zahra, JJ. PER CURIAM. Plaintiff appeals by leave granted from the trial court's opinion and order denying her post-divorce judgment request for: (1) declaratory relief with regard to the constitutionality of a portion of the Eligible Domestic Relations Order Act (the EDRO Act), MCL 38.1701 et seq.; and (2) injunctive relief with regard to the refusal of the Macomb County Employees' Retirement System (MCERS) to treat the domestic relations order (DRO), entered in conjunction with her divorce judgment, as an eligible domestic relations order (EDRO) under the EDRO Act. We hold that plaintiff failed to demonstrate that the challenged portion of the EDRO Act is unconstitutional, and we affirm the opinion and order of the trial court. Plaintiff and defendant had been married for almost forty-four years when they were divorced, pursuant to a consent judgment, in 1998. At that time, their eight children were no longer minors and the only marital asset was a vested pension from which defendant had been receiving monthly payments since he retired at the end of 1992. In conjunction with the consent judgment of divorce, plaintiff and defendant agreed to the entry of a DRO purporting to assign to plaintiff the right to receive, directly from the MCERS, one half of defendant's $573.37 monthly retirement benefit, along with another $200 from defendant's remaining share as alimony. When the MCERS received a copy of the DRO, it made the determination, as required by MCL 38.1710, that the DRO did not qualify as an EDRO, and notified plaintiff, as the named alternate payee, of its conclusion. Subsequently, plaintiff sought to have both defendant and the MCERS held in contempt of court, and moved the trial court to, among other things, declare a portion of the EDRO Act unconstitutional, as violative of the Equal Protection Clause of the Michigan Constitution. Const 1963, art 1,

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