Determination Spouse Cannot be Located

[chris]

Employee to become eligible in employer's profit sharing plan and MPP plan. Employee has told administrator that she has not seen her spouse in 8 years. I know Code Sec. 417(a)(2)(B) allows for spousal consent to not be obtained if plan administrator is satisfied that spouse cannot be located. What does/should a plan administrator do to become "satisfied" from a fiduciary point of view? try to obtain last known address of spouse, use letter forwarding service to get form to him to sign, etc............??

[david rigby]

Not sure anything is required. Spousal approval usually has to do with distributions from a plan, rather than participation in the plan.

[RTK]

Spousal consent would be required for beneficiary designations under the ps and qpsa waiver under mp (for non-spouse beneficiary). I have never seen anything specifically address steps the participant must follow to demonstrate that spouse cannot be located. I would think typical lost participant steps should suffice. However, I will add in the one missing spouse case I was asked about, the father of the participant was going to Thailand to look for the spouse. I will have to follow up on that some day.

[chris]

That's where I was coming from in terms of suggested steps to take to locate the spouse. Didn't know if any different approach should be taken. Would be a good idea to take same steps since spouse would probably show up upon participant's death and want the money. This way the designated beneficiaries and the plan should be protected from any such potential reappearance of the spouse. Thanks for the input.

[chris]

The other thing that comes to mind is the participant's getting a divorce. That way all involved would be protected...