Participant was a non-owner, born 5/6/47, still working when he died on 1/27/18. ERISA outline books seem to treat the situation as death before the RBD. Participant had no prior distributions; especially no annuities, so still a death before RBD. ERISA books and plan document requires either the 5-yr. rule or life expectancy rule be satisfied. The two beneficiaries are non-spouses. One is electing to take their half in a distribution. The other leaving theirs in the plan. The ERISA book examples do not address multiple beneficiaries electing both options. Only mention of multiple beneficiaries is if they both take the life expectancy, the oldest beneficiary age in the year following participant's death is used to determine the life expectancy. I looked at the Q&A reg. 1.401(a)(9)-3 Death before RBD: employee dying before the RBD, thus before distributions are treated as having begun under 401(a)(9), distribution of the entire interest must be made in accordance with one of the methods listed in 401(a)(9)(B)(ii): the 5-year rule or the life expectancy rule. I am unsure if the language of one method means multiple beneficiaries may take only one option or the other. PLEASE HELP... And, if my analysis seems wrong at any stage, please correct me.

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One of our current plans is asking about the possibility of adding a Cash Balance to their existing Safe Harbor 401(k)/Profit Sharing Plan. They are a medical practice with 115 participants. 10 Doctors and 105 non highly's. They currently have a SH Match with a Profit Sharing in place to maximize the Doctors allocation. They are wondering if it would be possible to add in a Cash Balance plan for the Doctors as they wish to put away a higher annual contribution. I do not have much experience with CB plans so i am wondering if this is possible? And if so how many of the NHCE's would need to be included in the CB? Also of note, they may be merging with a group of 4-5 other medical practices a couple of years down the road possibly becoming a controlled group. The other practices have plans in place however I don't know if any of them are CB plans. I know that they all have 401k plans in place but i don't know if any of them have CB plans as well. What type of issues if any could arise in this situation?

The sponsor of a governmental 457(b) plan would like to reduce the number of investment vendors/providers from 5 to 3. They would like to stop all new contributions going to 2 of the vendors, but allow participants to keep any existing assets invested with these 2 vendors. Is there anything preventing them from taking this approach?

If an employee goes on leave and is receiving third party payments such as third party sick pay or short term disability, can his/her 401k loan repayments still be suspended for up to a year under the unpaid leave exception? The employee is not receiving any payments from the employer - the third party sick pay is not paid directly by the employer but still shows up on the W2 from the employer. Since the employer is not actually paying the money (it's paid on their behalf) and cannot withhold from the payments, does this count as unpaid leave?

Unless there is a compelling reason, whenever we take over a 401(k) plan we at least discuss the topic of removing installment or annuity distribution options because they are not protected benefits and I like things easy. In this latest plan document I'm taking over from, the language suggests that the "ad hoc" distributions it allows are a protected benefit. This one, I'm less sure about. First of all, I'm presuming (since I can't get a copy of the basic plan doc, only the adoption agreement) that by "ad hoc" distributions, they mean amounts allowed to be taken out by a terminated participant in any amount at any time. Any thoughts as to if this might actually be protected somehow? Thanks.

Medical office has safe harbor match plan (no profit sharing funding). Plan excludes HCEs from the Safe harbor match as there are a number of high-paid para-professionals. Plan is not top heavy at this point. But when it does become top heavy, certainly the non-key HCEs will need to receive 3% (since the key owners are deferring the max.) And I assume ONLY the non-key HCEs who are excluded from the safe harbor match need to get the top heavy contribution (whether they deferred or not). The top heavy would certainly not have to go to all non-key. Comments? Thanks