We were recently notified of the death of a deferred vested participant who had terminated in 1979 and who was married at the time of death. The preretirement death benefit from the Plan document in effect in 1979 was the greater of the 5 Year Certain & Life benefit, paid for the guarantee period only, or the survivor portion of the 50% J & S benefit. After calculating the benefits, it appears that the 5 Year C&L benefit is the greater of the two.

Given what the QPSA rules are now, I'm wondering if any of the legislation regarding survivor benefits, such as REA '84, might apply retroactively and that we really should pay the surviving spouse the survivor portion of the 50 JS for her lifetime rather than a benefit for 5 years.

Employee to become eligible in employer's profit sharing plan and MPP plan. Employee has told administrator that she has not seen her spouse in 8 years. I know Code Sec. 417(a)(2)(B) allows for spousal consent to not be obtained if plan administrator is satisfied that spouse cannot be located. What does/should a plan administrator do to become "satisfied" from a fiduciary point of view? try to obtain last known address of spouse, use letter forwarding service to get form to him to sign, etc............??

A new client currently has (1) physicians getting formula A and (2) non-physicians getting formula B - and all the appropriate non-discrimination tests are performed annually.

Question 1: Does anyone see a problem with amending to (1) physicians get A (2) non-physicians except John Doe get B and (3) John Doe gets C

and

Question 2: More generally can you have plan covering 3 NHCE's which has formula A for Mary Smith , B for Joe Jones , and C for John Doe ??

I have a group of churches (diocese) who has adopted a 401(k) plan that we are now the TPA for. Under their old 403(b) plan, they had a church plan election. I'm not sure if something special needs to be done to have the church plan election or do they automatically have it (ie. do we need a private letter ruling?)? It appears as though Forms 5500 have been filed for the last two years. What do I do about that? Any help would be greatly appreciated!!

What records must a custodian/trustee keep and for how long must they be kept?

What are the record retention rules for custodians/trustees of IRA accounts? That is, what IRA records must be kept and how long must they be kept?

Any suggestions on how to coordinate short term disability payments with workers comp ttd payments? Which payment should I use to reduce the other? Since workers' comp ttd is a tax-free benefit, how does this affect our std benefit which is paid via payroll.

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Our tuition plan requires employees to stay employed with our company 2 years after they receive reimbursement. We also require them to sign a promissory note.

Unfortunately, we have had quite a few people leave before the expiration of their promissory note. Any suggestions on how to collect? Collection agency, court orders?

When is a plan administrator allowed to segregate a participant's account to provide for an alternate payee's interest prior to the determination that a DRO is a QDRO? My client has learned from a participant that a marital dissoluation agreement has been entered in his divorce but not DRO has been submitted to the plan for determination. My client believes that it will be some time (if ever) before the divorce attorneys prepare a DRO, most likely because the parties to the divorce don't have the money to pay the attorneys to do this. My client wants to ensure that the alternate payee does not come back at a later time after a QDRO is approved and argue that her interest was impacted because of a delay in segregating her interest in the plan from that of her ex-husband. I have reviewed Section 414(p) and it only requires the plan administrator to segregate the interests "during any period in which ht iessue of whether a domestic lreations order is a qualified domestic relations order is being determined". In my case, there is no domestic relations order yet. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

If an employer is generally relying on the fully-insured exception to most of HIPAA's privacy requirements and only receiving Summary Health Information and enrollment/disenrollment information, should the employer still be getting Business Associate Agreements with respect to their fully-insured plans if they use a payroll provider or outside service provider for enrollment (e.g., provides web-based enrollment, administration processing, etc.) or a broker that also may receive enrollment/disenrollment or other PHI?

http://www.ppbfh.com/index.htm

Excerpt: "Powers Phillips, P.C., is a small law firm located in downtown Denver, Colorado within convenient walking distance of over fifty bars and a couple of doughnut shops. Powers Phillips also maintains a small satellite office-in-exile on the cow-covered hillsides near Carbondale, Colorado, where it puts out to pasture some of its aging attorneys."

The message boards assume you live in London (long story omitted).

If you live further west (e.g., in the United States), the time shown to you by the message boards won't be correct unless you tell the message boards software which time zone to use when displaying the time.

Here's how to do it:

1. First make sure you're logged in. If the front page of the message boards at http://benefitslink.com/boards/ says "Welcome, Guest!" then you're not logged in yet.

2. Then use the following link to change your time zone setting:

click here

If you get a screen that says you're not logged in, hit your browser's refresh/reload key; that oughta change the screen and let you change your time zone setting. If you still get a screen that says you're not logged in, please let me know (davebaker@benefitslink.com).

Once you've selected your time zone, click on the "Change my account settings" button at the bottom of that page.

A plan's termination date is same as the last day of the plan year, 12/31/02. If the plan liquidates participant accounts and sends checks on 12/31/02, have the assets been distributed and the last Form 5500 will be for the 2002 plan year? OR does the plan have "wasting trust" assets and Form 5500s will continue to be filed until the assets in the trust completely liquidated (i.e., until the checks are cashed)? Thanks!

Aside from other restrictions under state and federal law, if a medical provider sends PHI in error to an individual's employer, is the employer's use of such PHI subject to any restrictions under the HIPAA privacy regulations? If so, where is this addressed in the regs. or other DHHS authority?

HIPAA privacy regs. state that participant authorizations must state the specific purpose(s) for which disclosure is permitted. May an authorization state that the specific purpose is any reason desired by the covered entity? If not, where is this addressed in the regs. or other DHHS authorit? Thanks.

I have had this happen both yesterday and today:

A thread is listed with a new response(s) on the "posts since last visit" page. When I enter the thread, the new response(s) are not there.

For example, in the "ADEA and retiree LTD plan" thread right now, I can only see the original question, even though a reply is there.

Yesterday, it happened on my thread about JCWAA rates and Section 404. I was able to "force" seeing the replies by hitting the "reply" button, which then brought up all of the replies under the entry box. Then I just left without replying.

Dave,

Great job on the enhanced Federal Register link. Is it possible to do the same for the weekly IRS Bulletin?

JEVD

Help, please! Master Trust covering two plans, MP PYE is 9/30/02 and 401k PYE 12/31/02. There would be seperate audits for the two plans but do we also file two Master Trust 5500's by 4/30/03 and 7/31/03?

Our company is looking to limit employees traveling abroad or coming to the U.S. due to the SARS mystery illness. Has your company implemented any policy on this? If yes, is the travel limited to specific countries or does it apply to all travel? Are there circumstances where travel would be approved?

Does anyone where I can find the 1983 GAM on the internet?

If a defined benefit plan has a death benefit of PVAB, can the plan be amended to eliminate this benefit? Where might I find regs/advice on this issue?