LIFE STATUS EVENTS - "SIGNIFICANT CHANGE"

[Guest CTopal]

Searching through the cobwebs of my brain, I seem to recall that employees would be able to enroll in benefits if they incur a 'significant change' under their coverage say through their spouse's plan. This would pertain to (example) a situation when a husband who has the family coverage goes through Open Enrollment at different time than the spouse and the change in benefit cost is 'significant' and they are no longer able to afford the plan. Now they would wish to enroll in the wife's plan and cancel the coverage under the husband's plan. I can't seem to locate regulations that would pretain to this - Can anyone help me with this one?

[oriecat]

I think you have two sections in play here:

Here are the regs: http://www.changeofstatus.com/resources/regs.asp

(f)(2)(ii) is Significant Cost Increases - this would allow the spouse to drop their coverage through their employer due to the cost changes, provided of course that the plan document allows such changes

then (f)(4) Change in coverage of spouse or dependent under other employer's plan should then allow the employee to pick up the coverage under their plan, provided that the plan doc allows it of course...