Larry Gagnon

If an individual has an account in a plan, how can that individual not be a participant in that plan? Unless the context in a given document clearly indicates a more limited definition, what am I missing?

Good answer!

I am surprised by this discussion. I had always assumed that, barring document language clearly to the contrary that I have never seen, payment date is irrelevant. If payment date is dispositive, I wonder about deferred income arrangements.

Re Lou S excellent comment. Same issue could be relevant for someone during their first year of employment (in addition to last if no end-of-year-employment requirement). To avoid even remote possibility of problems (& it is really remote), you may want to clarify that tier assignment will be based on rate of compensation for less than full year employees. For example, someone with comp of $50,000 working 4 months will be treated as having comp of $150,000 for this Tier-assignment purpose only.

Make life easier on yourself and change Tier 4 to >/= $125,000. Then, no need to redefine Tier 3 periodically.

Mr. Goldberg is correct. There is no need to change the JSA and a JSA in payment mode cannot be changed. However, the Plan Administrator can be ordered to send half the amount to be paid to the alternate payee beginning a date certain and ending with death of alternate payee. It is custom also to mention that the alternate payee will be responsible for taxes on the amount received. It is also custom to require each recipient to transfer any allocation received in error to the intended recipient within a certain number of days (e.g. 10). QDRO will have to contain alternate payees correct SS# in body or in an attachment. All of this causes a little extra effort by Administrator but total payment stream should not change at all.

If the loan can only be taken for hardship reasons, the hardship need is $900 and the minimum loan is $1,000, then a loan of $1,000 is needed to meet the hardship.

I just skimmed Hopkins and believe it clearly correct. Why did QDROphile think it was a "crock"? Unless I misread Hopkins, ex-wife was awarded alimony upon divorce but no interest in pension of husband. Thereafter, husband terminated employment AND started receiving his pension in the form of a JSA with current wife. Husband fell well behind on alimony payments. Ex-wife obtained additional court order (QDRO-esq) which allowed her to be assigned a portion of stream of payments to ex-husband in order to pay down alimony deficit AND the duty of ATT to reform the JSA to make her the beneficiary of a JSA. Of course, unless she was born the same day as the new wife, such a reformation would make all the prior payments inconsistent with the reformed JSA. Ex-wife was ultimately allowed portion of stream of payments to ex-husband but NOT allowed to become ex-post-facto JSA beneficiary. IMHO, perfect result. To FMSINC: In Hopkins, court uses "retirement" to mean annuity has started. Hopkins is clearly inconsistent with any argument that quitting a job means prior spouse must enjoy JSA. Otherwise, Hopkins ex-wife would have won both halves of her request. Any contrary thoughts appreciated. Did I misread Hopkins?

I do not have an answer, just a couple of questions. How can having THEIR revocable trust as a beneficiary benefit the employee? I assume "their" means she and her husband. Without research, I would be amazed if there were a tax benefit possible to naming the trust as opposed to the husband. Can anyone imagine otherwise? As she indicated, beneficiary payments would cease upon the husband's death in any case. Note that if the husband receives a payment after his wife's demise, he can put it into a bank account already owned by the trust. So, I can only make guesses as to what this is all about and none of them reflect well on her and even less well on her faith in her husband. But these guesses really make no sense because (I infer) the term "revocable" means he could revoke the trust after her death. I guess it is theoretically possible that her death makes the trust revocable - though I have never heard of such a trust provision. Maybe he legally is incompetent for some reason. Maybe this issue can be mooted by discussing with her what goals she seeks to achieve. Maybe I should not have created this memo. May be.

Chani: You have piqued my curiosity. Unless you think the QDRO is the result of a fraud on the court, this should be a simple matter. Call if you would like to discuss. QDRO almost certainly effects a net benefit to surviving spouse. I can probably quickly estimate net benefit depending on mortality table used, general annuity discount rate, which JSA percentage is assigned to SS (likely 50%), ages, any special early retirement benefit. If your calculations have resulted in a net increase in cost to sponsor as compared to participant survival, something is amiss. Larry Gagnon 734-429-4054