(Sorry, I posted this in "other kinds of welfare benefit plans" as well, but I'm not sure that's the right place for it. So I'm posting it here as well.) Stumbled on this forum, what a great wealth of wisdom! I'm a union rep and we are considering starting a healthcare plan for our members. Instead of the various employers having their own healthcare plans for our members, the employers are going to give us the money and we will provide the healthcare plan for our own members. I believe we will need to start a VEBA and a MEWA, but I am uncertain as to how much we will need to allocate for start-up costs (e.g. legal advice, documents, etc.). We have 10-15k local union members. I'm assuming it will cost $500-$1mm to start up and at least 1.5 years before we can go live. Am I even in the ballpark? Anyone know how much it will cost us to get this started? Any help is much appreciated!

Participant submitted a request for a hardship to purchase primary residence. The Buy/Sell Agreement lists the buyer as his wife. The mortgage will be in the wife's name. They are "legally married and will live together in this house. Question - although the house is in the wife's name, can the participant take a hardship for the expenses incurred regarding this purchase??

(we only allow hardship withdrawals from employee deferral and rollover sources of money - yes, we know we can change that but don't really want to and that's not a question in this post ) I am the HR manager in the scenario (and worked in 401k recordkeeping back in the stone age of mainframes and quarterly processing as the recordkeeper and the TPA in one of the top 3 large global HR consulting firms) Is it now common practice to require the employee to fill out all of the hardship distribution paperwork that must be notarized with proof of need prior to the employee (or HR) being able to find out the amount available? I was told our TPA won't tell us the amount upfront before the form is completed by the employee because "We have found that if the maximum amount available is provided, the hardship requested is exactly the amount available. Since the IRS states that the hardship distribution cannot exceed the amount of the hardship, the participant should provide the amount of the financial hardship amount and reason." Does it not stand to reason that an employee is not going to ask for MORE than the amount available if they know that is the maximum they can take and if their need meets or exceeds that amount? And in the end it's the documentation that is going to rule the day on whether it is an approved reason or not and what amount out of the available is going to be given? (In both cases this last week, both employees had LESS available than their need) Just curious if this is SOP... or if this is just that the TPA doesn't want to calculate the amount only for an employee to decide they do not want to take it. In 15 months with this TPA and employer, I haven't had an employee refuse whatever is available even if it was lower than the need. So it is not like I am calling to get "quotes" and then not following through.

Hi everyone, I'm curious what everyone else is doing for an e-mail retention policy. We're looking to put an auto-deletion policy in place, but are having a hard time nailing down an appropriate set of parameters. Seven years is where my mind instantly goes, but in light of cumbersome investigations and producing copious amounts of email, I'd love to trim that back if possible. What is everyone else using and what are your thoughts on whatever you implemented/considered? Thanks!

Payroll-based SHM is not deposited by the end of the quarter after the deferrals were taken. What are the consequences?