"About EBSA's Field Assistance Bulletin No. 2025-01 (Jan. 14, 2025), many have remarked that it might be incongruous to use a turnover to a State's abandoned-property administration instead of a rollover to an Individual Retirement Account.

"But what about an amount that's not rollover-eligible because it's the Section 401(a)(9)-required distribution? Example: Mary severed from employment in 2016, and has made no communication to her individual-account retirement plan since. All of Mary's account is non-Roth. In 2024, Mary reached age 73. Mary has not requested any distribution. If nothing changes before April 1, 2025, the plan provides an involuntary distribution of Mary's Section 401(a)(9)-required minimum. Following Mary's December 31, 2024 account balance, assume her to-be-paid Section 401(a)(9)-required minimum distribution is $900. The plan mails a check for that amount to Mary's address of record. The plan gets no bounce-back or other notice about the address, and the plan's use of LexisNexis and other tools confirms that the address of record still is Mary's address. After seven months, Mary has neither deposited nor presented the check. The plan administrator's repeated efforts to communicate with Mary got no response.

"Is it a given that the minimum-distribution amount cannot be put in an IRA? After a suitable noncommunication period, might the plan's administrator turn over the April 1, 2025 payment amount to the relevant State's abandoned-property administration? Or might the plan's administrator do something else?"

"Company A is owned 100% by Owner A. Company A has a Safe Harbor 401(k) Plan and a few employees. Company B is owned 50% by Owner A and 50% by Owner A's spouse. There are no other employees in Company B and no 401(k) Plan. Would Company A and B be part of a Controlled Group? To me, it seems like they would be due to attribution. So, Owner A owns 100% of Company A and 100% of Company B (50% on her own and 50% by attribution). In this case, would we need to know Owner A's compensation from Company B as well as the spouse's compensation from Company B and test the aggregate compensation from both companies in Company A's 401(k) Plan? The spouse would also be eligible to contribute to Company's A's 401(k) Plan, correct?"