Plan Termination; If the Plan Terminates Effective Earlier to the Concluding Day of the Plan Year, Does Mutatis Mutandis Concluding Day of the Plan Year Allocation Condition Recalibrate to the Effective Date of the Plan Termination?

[Kent Allard]

If a plan terminates, and the plan had heretofore stipulated a concluding day of the plan year condition for eligibility for an allocation, and the effective date of the plan termination occurs prior to the hitherto calibrated end of the plan year, prima facie the last day of plan year employment eligibility condition resynchronizes to the effective date of plan termination. Please provide guidance on this situation.   

[Bill Presson]

If I grasp the meaning here, then it depends on what your termination amendment/resolution says. Ours typically eliminates last day requirement.

[Peter Gulia]

Let’s leave to actuaries what mūtātīs mūtandīs might mean in mathematics.

And let’s leave to teachers what mutatis mutandis might mean in logic.

Black’s Law Dictionary (11th ed. 2019) describes the phrase’s meaning as “with the necessary changes[.]”

Lawyers have used the phrase to avoid some duplicative renderings of terms, promises, conditions, representations, and warranties in some kinds of contracts, obligations, or undertakings. A leading treatise about how to write contracts gives this example: “Each Guarantor hereby makes to the Lender, as if they were in this agreement, mutatis mutandis, each of the statements of fact made by the Borrower in the Loan Agreement.” Kenneth A. Adams, A Manual of Style for Contract Drafting ¶ 13.576 [page 449] (5th ed. 2023).

But whatever the old phrase might mean in other contexts, one should not presume that specifying a date that has some meaning regarding a plan’s discontinuance or termination by itself changes a day set for a retirement plan’s allocation condition.

Bill Presson leads us to the solution: Read, thoroughly and carefully, what the documents governing the plan say.

If what the documents provide is ambiguous, the plan’s administrator might use its discretion to interpret what the plan provides or omits.

Often better, the administrator might suggest that the plan sponsor amend the documents.

Or does The Shadow know?

[Bird]

I wouldn't typically terminate a plan before the end of the year if the company wanted to make a contribution for that year, or else, as Bill Presson notes, you do something to waive last day requirements or whatever. Depends on what you want to happen I guess. 

mutatis mutandis to you too.

[Belgarath]

Post hoc ergo propter hoc, ipso facto, mephitis mephitis, illegitimi non carborundum, non sum dignus, all to say I have no idea. I took 1 semester of Latin in 7th grade, and by the time I got to 5th declension plural ablative, decided it was a language fit only for masochists.

But seriously, I think Bill and Bird have it covered.

Bufo Americanus.

[CuseFan]

Yeah, I took two years of Latin in high school, and no, just no. Cogito ergo fuggetaboutit.

[Bird]

4 years in HS. My dad pushed me and said it would help my vocab. If I had spent that time reading an English dictionary it would have done me more good. I've forgotten most of it, but everyone once in a while something gets triggered. There might have been two or three things I learned that were...interesting, but not necessarily useful. e.g. coagere means "to come together" (as in troops massing for battle). So coagulate comes from that. But it's not like I didn't know what coagulate means so...shrug.

[Belgarath]

Funny, my Dad said the same thing - but fortunately, I didn't listen. However, the man has the most prodigious vocabulary of anyone I've ever known. I'm with you - I'd rather know less, and use the dictionary more. 

[CuseFan]

Yup - it was my mother who pushed Latin, saying it was the basis for all the other Romance languages - but after two years of Latin the last thing I wanted was to take another language. Should have taken Spanish or French, but I must admit Latin has helped on the vocabulary side, when I can remember that is! She also suggested I take typing (still called that back then) but I drew the line and refused. If I knew then what I know now I would have taken typing and not taken Latin, and maybe it wouldn't have taken 10 minutes to type this response LOL!

[Belgarath]

Funny thing - when I was in high school, I took typing (all right, mostly because the teacher was radiantly attractive) but we had what was, for those days, pretty advanced electric typewriters. I got reasonably good at touch typing. Then when I went to college, all I could afford was this little Underwood manual typewriter, which was about the size of a lunchbox. You couldn't really touch type because you had to hammer the keys, and if you went more than about 20 words per minute, the strikers stuck together, and correcting errors back then wasn't fun. So over the course of 4 years, I lost the ability to type without looking at the keyboard, and have never regained it to this day. It is a source of amusement to my co-workers that I type while holding a pen, in writing position, between the fingers on my right hand. I've thought about doing a video of "Remedial Typing For The Slow Of Wit Dinosaur" but I don't think it would catch on.

Boy, did this get off track. My apologies to the original poster.