GMK

Thanks, David. Interesting stuff.

If the DRO is otherwise OK, I'd note in the letter that tells the parties that the DRO is qualified that the plan is now known as ABC, Inc. 401(k) Profit Sharing Plan, and leave it at that. If there is another reason to send the DRO back to the judge, I'd have the name corrected along with the other correction(s). (This is my thought on how I'd handle it. I am not an attorney.)

would someone please post a link to this reg. I am unable to google it. thanks.

^Maybe we should partner in an effort to congress a law that outlaws such silliness. (Just kidding. We all know that "safe harbor" has just been verbitized forever.)

I do not favor transitioning nouns and adjectives into verbs. Granted, it cutifies the language, but sometimes it sounds a bit affectationed and in other cases, it can imprecise the meaning. Maybe I'm just too old to be todayed, but in the future ... sorry, but going forward, I will try to keep up.

Also FWIW, this is an eligibility question. If the Plan Doc says they have to get to the entry date to be considered Participants, then they aren't Participants and cannot defer. If they became Participants prior to the entry date, that is, if they were Participants when they terminated, then you look at pay timing and such.

^as to records from long ago, see the linked article in post #21.

Agreed that this (or a simple dollar amount) is the way we like to see it come in (and because it's a QDRO, why we do a litany of private, superstitious rituals aimed at achieving that result). But dividing the balance accrued during the marriage is as common as anything else here in the Northland. And the ciphering is a complication they usually leave for us to do. We report back to the parties the amount we have determined the AP will get with a summary of the numbers we used to made the determination and go with that, subject to objections.

Adding "on or" is only a few keystrokes and clears the ambiguity. For example, RMD's when the participant dies before the RBD or dies on or after the RBD. And it's so much shorter than the "next following or coincident with" we see in some cases.

Even out of context, this says it perfectly and not only for the investors.

There is no RMD for the years before the year in which the participant retired.

^Probably can do it if, for example, you calculate the payroll for a given week on the following Monday and pay it on Wednesday.

The remaining steps are to calculate the deferral and match amounts for each employee and to prepare and transmit (usually electronically) a list of those amounts in a format acceptable to the service provider. The computer does the calculations, and the list transmission may involve a little human input, so it doesn't take very long. Most places adjust their schedule for running payroll for expected interferences, like holidays, but delays may occur due to snow days, hurricanes, unexpected absence of whoever does the processing, and like that.

We Benefit from the equation, because Mr. Poje posted it. We know the solution to the equation (given in the first line in Mr. Feldt's post #8) is Right. And the thread Features some clever repartee. Um, what was the question again?

To infinity ... and beyond! or at least to Staples.

but only if x does not equal zero or -1. and Austin, if you went paperless (as discussed in another thread), you wouldn't need staples.

And the weekend will be even better!

As I said, I think the linked article suggests that beneficiaries will each have to take their share of the RMD in the years after the year of death, which is when the participant RMD rules end, and the beneficiary RMD rules take over. Don't know if it matters, but one could imagine a case where a high tax bracket beneficiary rolls the benefit over, and the low tax bracket beneficiary takes the cash. If the low bracket person can claim the entire RMD, the IRS would not get as much tax revenue out of the distributions as they would have if both beneficiaries had to take RMD's. Just a thought.

The Plan Document will define how to count days of service for eligibility, including whether or not service before a gap in employment is counted when a person is rehired . Also, you have posted this under the section on How to Use the Message Boards. To reach a wider readership, you might wish to re-post it under one of the retirement plan sections.

Situation 3 in this article: http://www.morningstar.com/advisor/t/68264867/rmd-conundrums.htm suggests that in the case of taking the participant's RMD for the year in which the participant died, it might be OK to count a cash distribution to one of the beneficiaries as the RMD, but also notes that some feel that each beneficiary should take their share of the RMD total, even for the year-of-death RMD. My sense from the article is that this is probably not OK in the years after the year of the participant's death and that for those subsequent RMD's to beneficiaries, each beneficiary has to take their own share of the RMD. If it's one account, they use the shortest life expectancy of the beneficiaries to determine the total beneficiary RMD amount. If they split into separate accounts by December 31 of the year after the death, then they can each use their own life expectancies.

I know of an ESOP that requires a lump sum distribution at age 65 or retirement, whichever occurs later. With the rollover options available these days, it's not so terrible for participants, and it gets them more diversified. It's certainly a different situation than with a 401(k), but I don't think it's fundamentally detrimental to 401(k) participants to be forced out after retirement, not that we do it. From the plan's view, there's something to be said for passing the administrative burden of on-going caretaker duties for retiree accounts to others who are better equipped to handle it.

I think we're using different words to describe the same thing. I see that your 'once the RBD is reached' refers to the RBD that applies to the spouse beneficiary after the employee dies, not the employee's as-yet-undetermined RBD. Bottom line is that when the employee dies before the employee's RBD, no one, not even a sole beneficiary spouse, has the option to base the distribution period on the employee's life expectancy. (This option is only available if the employee dies after the employee's RBD.)

Thanks, Belgarath. Did you mean to say "before the RBD is reached" instead of "once the RBD is reached"? Since it's been 3+ months since my e-mail to M-H, I doubt I'll hear from them. Perhaps they would look into it if the message came from someone more esteemed, such as, yourself maybe.

That's how I'd read it. You have to do what the Plan Document says. When this employee retires and is then required to take an RMD, the employee will receive a lump sum distribution, part of which will be the RMD with the remainder eligible for rollover.

You said that the plan does not allow in-service distributions, and since the RBD is not yet determined, there is no RMD. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks to me like the participant's only option was to leave it all in the plan, no RMD, no lump sum.