Pension Protection Act Blog

Yesterday, in In re Marriage Cases, No. S147999 (May 15, 2008), the California Supreme Court addressed the issue of whether domestic partnership is the same as marriage. As framed by the Court, the issue they addressed in this decision is:
“Accordingly, the legal issue we must resolve is not whether it would be constitutionally permissible […]

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Paul Secunda has an interesting post today on the Workplace Prof Blog about IBM reclassifying workers from salaried to hourly. The corporate buzzword for this is “reclassification”, and the story, which originated on NPR Marketplace, also mentions FedEx reclassifying drivers as independent contractors, and Allstate reclassifying agents as independent contractors.
For plan documents, the grandfather […]

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Common language contained somewhere in most qualified plan documents is the definition of spouse. Within that definition can be the requirement that a participant must be married for a period of one year before the spouse is recognized by the plan as the participant’s spouse. In a recent case from the 5th Circuit […]

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Tucked away in Section 6.05 of Rev. Proc. 2008-6 is a requirement that determination letter submissions contain a highlighted or redlined copy of the plan document. It states:

6.05 Except in the case of applications involving master and prototype plans filed on Form 5307 or determination letters for volume submitter plans under section 9.02(2)(d), a […]

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One of the reasons I write plan documents for a living is because they are so interesting. Each plan document is like writing a novel, and a good plan document reads like a good novel. The other reason I like writing plan documents for a living is that the IRS requires a plan […]

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Aaron Juckett over at The One-Stop ESOP Blog posts a great reminder about items to look at when reviewing ESOP plan documents. In ESOP Planning: Plan Documents and Disclosures, Aaron discusses 8 questions to ask when reviewing the plan documents, including whether the plan documents are consistent with how the plan is being […]

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Earlier this year, I posted about a provision contained in one of the 13 appropriate bills which would permit 457(b) plans to include a qualified Roth contribution program.
H.R. 2419, also known as the Food and Energy Security Act of 2007, commonly known as the Farm Bill, contains Section 12512, which is “Participants in government section […]

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When the House of Representatives failed to act on the Pension Protection Technical Corrections Act of 2007 last week, it created a terrific end-of-the-year PPA question.
The question: Are plans required to provide rollovers to nonspouse beneficiaries?
The answer: Yes No Yes
The reason behind changing the answer from “Yes” […]

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When a participant dies before filing for legal separation or divorce from their spouse, who is entitled to the participant’s benefits under the plan? The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals recently addressed this situation in Greenebaum Doll v. Sandler, Nos. 06-6494, 06-6496 (6th Cir. Dec. 3, 2007).
In Greenebaum, the participant died three days after […]

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One set of facts, two plan documents involved = two different outcomes.
While redrafting a cafeteria plan document to update the language in the plan, the Eleventh Circuit’s decision in Popowski v. Parrott, No. 05-10235 (Aug. 24, 2006), popped back up as a reminder to carefully consider the reimbursement language in the plan document.
Popowski caught my […]

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