Open Enrollment.

[Guest Thornton]

I have a plan with age 21 and 6 months of service eligibility requirement. The sponsor/purchaser is buying another company with a 3 month and no age eligibility requirements. The purchaser will give past service credit for service with the purchased company. So far no problem.

Since there are participants in the purchased company plan that will not meet the eligibility requirements of the purchasor's plan (all NHCE's), the purchaser wants to allow those participants in the sellers plan to be immediately eligible while not bringing all of seller's employees in through an open enrollment on 2/02/02, the closing date.

I've considered using partial open enrollment language such as "the eligibilty requirements are waived for any Eligible Employee who was employed on Febuary 1, 2002 and a participant in the Seller's Company's Plan." Is this permissible? Since the Purchaser is bringing in NHCE's that it could legitimately exclude, I don't see a problem. Can this be done with a protype? Should it be submitted?