cwallace

We have a 16 year old minor who is now receiving the remaining stream of pension benefits of her deceased father (the plan participant). There is a custodian in place to make the payments to. Just wondering about the minor beneficiary naming their own beneficiary of their benefit in case something happens to her. Generally, it is my understanding that custodians do not have the authority to do that on behalf of the minor. Anyone dealt with this before?

This is a union plan and we do have A&S benefits under the Welfare Plan, but the trustees were interested in ways to allow access to funds to supplement since this would not increase costs to the plan and the employees wouldn't need to pay premiums for another plan.

Our plan is looking into the possibility of adding an in-service withdrawal feature tied to the occurrence of a short-term/temporary disability. We have not been able to find much guidance in our research to confirm that (1) this is permissible and (2) what parameters can we place on it. I know the Treas. Reg. 1.401(b)(1)(ii) allows for in-service withdrawals of funds after a "fixed number of years, the attainment of a stated age, or upon the prior occurrence of some event such as layoff, illness, disability, retirement, death or severance of employment." Would a short-term or temporary disability (that would not qualify for the exception to the 10% early withdrawal penalty if the worker is under 59 1/2) be an event that would allow for an in-service withdrawal? (We would only allow withdrawal of employer contributions that are vested and put a cap on the amount that could be withdrawn, plus require proof/documentation for the short-term disability). If anyone has added this type of feature or can provide references to any IRS or DOL guidance (whether articles, PLRs, Rev, Ruls., etc) that would be great. My research hasn't been very fruitful (although I did come across at least one plan that incorporates this feature) but not much more.

We had a participant request to come and review the financial reports of the qualified plans (i.e., essentially the 5500s). The participant does not want to pay copy costs and just wants to come to the office. We are limiting access to our office due to COVID and do not want participants coming in to the office. So, the two options I can think of are (1) let the participant come but limit his time and place him in an unused office and require a mask the whole time or (2) waive the copy costs and send him the documents. Does anyone see any issues with these options? Thank you.

I know that a QDRO can be used to collect back child support from a participant's 401k account. The participant is now deceased and the ex-spouse does not currently have a QDRO for the back child support. Another person (none of the children) is named as the beneficiary under the 401k. Can the ex go get the QDRO now, post death, and apply it to the 401k plan and require us to hold off paying out to the beneficiary while she goes and tries to get one?

This is all very good information. Thank you all. This is for a divorce that happened in 2008 but the participant just now had the QDRO drafted and it references an award based on the split in 2008. The problem is that the data does exist it is just much more difficult to get and complete the proper calculations the farther we have to go back in time. The Plan itself certainly has record of all the contributions made to the account and the hours earned, but the 401k recordkeeper maintains the accounts and invests the money and therefore we have to lean on them for the daily account balance numbers and the earnings/losses calculations. I will definitely get more involved with the drafting side by advising of the difficulty in getting old data and denying based on not being able to determine the amount of the award. I am just having a very difficult time getting the prior recordkeeper to cooperate with me.

Our Retirement Plan transitioned recordkeepers at the beginning of 2016. We don't have that many, but from time to time we will get QDROs in that require data and/or earnings calculations from prior to 2016 and we'll have to request that from the prior recordkeeper. For a while they were really good about providing the information relatively quickly. Now it is taking upwards of 6 months to get anything out of them. We have 3 QDROs currently pending that we are waiting for data from the prior recordkeeper that have been outstanding for more than 3 months. Is there any recourse against this recordkeeper (other than what would have been stated in the original contract with the recordkeeper)? Obligations as a holder of data that is governed by ERISA? I generally recommend new QDROs from incorporating provisions that need data from prior to 1/1/2016 to avoid this, but from time to time we'll get stale QDROs in (one participant waited 10 years to submit the QDRO to us).