How to adminster benefit payments when employee lingers in a coma?

[Guest charna]

Employee in coma. Family consists of only brothers out of town. Employee elected sufficient funds to cover his unreimbursed medical bills, but family advises they cannot get an emergency guardianship or power of attorney due to element of certainty that our employee will die. How will i be able to remit these funds to the vendors without his (or a qualified guardian's) signature on the checks?

[QDROphile]

Why is it your problem to get the money out to the vendors?

[GBurns]

Why would his signature be on the vendors checks??

[Guest charna]

i didn't see the need to respond to the first reply. guess in a small company, folks just tend to look out for one another and when someone puts money aside so that the bills will get paid, it's pretty frustrating that you can't pay them because they're not alive, and they're not dead. either case would allow me to help. my hands are tied this way. i don't understand why the plan doesn't address this scenario. he still lies there. his family can do nothing. the courts will not allow them to obtain a guardianship because of his certain death.

to the second reply - i have always made all my checks on major claims payable to both the claimant and the vendor. on co-pays, little things, etc., the claimant pays and i reimburse. but on a $1200 hospital charge, the claimant has not paid anything, was waiting for the ins. to move first. so i make checks to both (which covers me paying the benefit to the claimant) and the employee signs the back and mails it to the vendor. vendors around here love it. it's a trust fund check and they feel very comfortable with it and with knowing i will make sure the insurance company pays the correct share then will get the rest of the bill paid from the claimant's funds. perhaps that is why we have such a super rate of participation in our 125 fund?

[QDROphile]

So you are operating the plan for the benefit of the vendors rather than participants?

You may not like my style of response, but you should consider what the fiduciary duties and standards are, including the requirement to follow plan terms. If you go beyond them, even out of good-hearted concern, you invite trouble that is difficult to foresee.

You haven't said what the plan says about how to get disbursements. Perhaps the plan document could be "better," but I start with the proposition that the problem is the family's and there is something wrong with the conclusion that court is preventing an arrangement that will allow somone to protect the interests of an incapacitated person. Who is authorizing the expenses that will be paid from the plan, and on what basis?

In the end, the representatve of the deceased employee will be able to get the funds to pay bills of the employee.