Corporate Trustee: no GUST/EGTRRA restatement

[Lori H]

A 7 participant profit sharing plan with a 1965 effective date appears to have not been restated for GUST nor any of its following amendments. The plan has a large financial institution acting as corporate trustee and the client has been paying them appx $6000 annually for this role. Most recent document is an unexecuted doc from aforesaid financial institution dating june 1994. Recently, (9/25/08) Plan sponsor received correspondence from the plan trustee stating that they (the trustee) need copies of restatements/amendments since 1994 in order to be tax qualified. They also bring up EPCRS and VCP and then state they want to resign as trustee and await appointment of successor trustee.

Is this trustee on the hook?

[J Simmons]

Not unless the ER has an agreement with the corporate trustee that it was responsible for keeping the plan documents updated, and not even then if the corporate trustee can show that it sent for the ER to sign all the right restatements and amendments at the right times.