withdrawing from annuity fund

[Guest JD698]

Member wants to withdraw all of the money in his annuity fund and close the account. He is legally married but he has not seen his wife since 1997 and says she is missing. Can the fund allow him to receive all of the monies in the account? What about his wife?

This is a defined contribution plan and is a collectively bargained plan.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[MGB]

What do you mean by an annuity fund? Is this a qualified plan? Is it a defined benefit or defined contribution plan? Is this a private employer, a church plan or a governmental plan?

You listed this under the defined benefit plan board. However, you use terminology (fund and account) that imply this is a defined contribution plan.

[KJohnson]

MGB--For some reason in the multiemployer/collectively bargained world, the term "annuity fund" was used for dc plans (traditionally money purchase pension) that were set up years after the original db plan. I assume that is what he is referring to. However, because of the IRS' position on crediting delinquent contributions in the multiemployer context, many of those money purchase pension plans were converted in the last five or six years to profit sharing plans. However, those profit sharing plans usually kept QJSA provisions for all types of money to avoid the problems of segregating the MPPP assets from the profit sharing plan assets.

To answer the question--if, as I suspect, the plan is subject to the QJSA provisions, you need to look at Reg 1.401(a)-20 Q&A 27 which says that spousal consent is not required if it is "established to the satisfaction of the plan representative that there is no spouse or that the spouse cannot be located..."

[david rigby]

Get to that IRS reg. from here:

http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/cfrhtml...26cfrv5_00.html