AlbanyConsultant

Ah, SoCalActuary, if only that had been thought of before the alt payee had taken his money and run! Would you need to have that written into the QDRO, though? Especially since most of the times, the bills from us (TPA) and the lawyers don't come until after the distribution occurs. At this point, I think our advice is going to be that we recommend against it because there was no prior notification, but that if the Trustees REALLY want to charge the participant's account, it's their call, and they have to be ready to defend that in case the participant goes howling to the DOL. And then the next sentence is what kind of policy to put in place on a going-forward basis.

Now that we have an OK to pass the costs of a QDRO along to a participant, what sort of notifications should we have in place? A client of mine just had their first since this new attititude, and it's been a doozy; probably several thousand dollars of time when it's all added up. The document says that the plan can pay expenses from the trust. The SPD doesn't say anything about this, though it does mention that if a court finds that an action of a particular participant is detrimental to the plan as a whole (which I would say could potentially include trying to have the whole plan pay the costs of one participant's QDRO drafting/review), the plan can be ordered to offset your benefit by a court. Not exactly what I was looking for. But does the plan have enough justification to say that the plan document allows it, so we can do it? If the participants should be notified upfront, does that mean we have to re-write the SPD's of all our plans?