439 Mass. 97, 104 (2003) (pension rights “often constitute valuable marital assets”). In arguing that Bettencourt had no property interest in his retirement allowance, as stated previously, PERAC posits that an employee’s interest is always contingent on not being convicted of an offense “applicable to his office” under § 15 (4); in contractual terms, this contingency, in PERAC’s view, is a condition precedent that must be satisfied before the employee’s right to retirement benefits “matures” into a contractual right, see Haverhill v. George Brox, Inc., 47 Mass. App. Ct. 717, 719 (1999), and without so maturing, no property right is or could be created. In support of this argument, PERAC relies on three decisions of courts applying the laws of other States: Hopkins, 150 F.3d at 1162 (<HOLDING>); Hames v. Miami, 479 F. Supp. 2d 1276, 1288
holding that an employees protected interest in a pension vested before he or she became eligible to collect the pension holding that an employee had a legitimate expectation of privacy in his office even though the papers seized from the office were not the property of the employee holding that the defendant withheld pension benefits in breach of the plan holding that an antiassignment clause in a pension plan is valid under  541c2 and that the pension benefits thus do not become property of the estate and may not be made subject to a pay order under section 1325c holding that under oklahoma law public employee convicted of accepting bribe while in office had no property right in pension benefits because pension was always contingent on maintaining honorable service while in office employees acceptance of bribe constituted breach of duty of honorable service and as result employee had no vested right in pension