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Paterno Passes on Home to His Wife for $1 - Some legal experts, in
trying to gauge the legal exposure of the university and its top officials
to lawsuits brought by suspected victims of the assistant, Jerry
Sandusky, have theorized that Paterno could be a target of civil
actions
Experts in estate planning and tax law, in interviews, cautioned that it would be hard to determine the Paternos'
motivation simply from the available documents. It appears the family house had been the subject of years of
complex and confusing transactions. Lawrence A. Frolik, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh who
specializes in elder law, said that he had "never heard" of a husband selling his share of a house for $1 to his spouse
for tax or government assistance purposes. "I can't see any tax advantages," Frolik said. "If someone told me that,
my reaction would be, 'Are they hoping to shield assets in case if there's personal liability?'" He added, "It sounds
like an attempt to avoid personal liability in having assets in his wife's name." Two lawyers examined the available
documents in recent days. Neither wanted to be identified because they were not directly involved in the case or the
property transaction. One of the experts said it appeared to be an explicit effort to financially shield Joe Paterno.
The other regarded the July transaction, at least on its face, as benign. Last Wednesday, the university's board of
trustees fired Paterno and Graham B. Spanier, the university's president. In 2002, Mike McQueary, then a graduate
assistant in the football program, told Paterno that he had seen Sandusky with a boy in the football building's
showers. How explicit McQueary was in describing what he saw is in dispute. But according to state prosecutors,
Paterno testified under oath that McQueary had told him that he had seen Sandusky doing something of a sexual
nature to a roughly 10-year-old boy. Paterno did not report the incident to the police or encourage McQueary to
make such a report. Instead, he passed along the allegation the next day to the university's athletic department and
one other senior administrator.
Fired Paterno could receive six-figure annual pension from Penn State -
Former Penn State football coach Joe Paterno's long service at the
university theoretically puts him in line for a pension of more than
$500,000 a year, according to an Associated Press analysis of state
public pension records - The retirement system also confirmed
Tuesday that Sandusky collects a $59,000 annual pension and
withdrew $148,000 upon retirement
HARRISBURG, Pa. -- Former Penn State football coach Joe Paterno's long service at the university theoretically
puts him in line for a pension of more than $500,000 a year, according to an Associated Press analysis of state
public pension records. Paterno's pension records obtained Tuesday from the State Employees' Retirement System
credit him with more than 60 years in the system. The formula used to determine benefits makes him eligible for a
pension equal to 100 percent of the average of his three highest-salary years. His pay rose from $541,000 to
$568,000 over the past three full calendar years. When Paterno retires, he will have to make a set of choices to
determine his pension, including whether to designate a survivor to receive benefits after he dies and whether to
obtain a one-time, lump-sum payment of his own contributions. State Employees' Retirement System spokeswoman
Pamela Hile said Internal Revenue Code and Retirement Code benefit limits may also apply, so the agency does not
issue estimated pension benefits ahead of time. There also is a long-service supplement that could boost Paterno to
110 percent of his final average salary. A 2006 report on Pennsylvania state pensions said the largest pension at that
time within SERS was $254,000, being collected by a Penn State surgery professor who had withdrawn a $554,000
lump sum.
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