The Pension Protection Act Blog

In Halbach v. Great-West Life & Annuity, No. 07-3865/07-3867 (CA8 April 13, 2009), the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals recently addressed what constitutes a valid amendment to an employee welfare benefit plan. In 2004, Great-West provided a package of medical coverage to both active employees and former employees who were also receiving long-term disability [...]

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When a plan terminates, the IRS says that affected participants become 100% vested in their account balances. More specifically, this requirement is from Internal Revenue Code section 411(d)(3), which states:
(3) Termination or partial termination; discontinuance of contributions. Notwithstanding the provisions of subsection (a), a trust shall not constitute a qualified trust under section [...]

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On June 28, 2007, the Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit issued an interesting opinion about an employee whose benefits were denied due to the plan adopting an amendment which changed the way hours of service are calculated for vesting credit purposes. (Hat tip to Brian King of Brian King’s ERISA Blog, who [...]

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Recognizing when a plan has partially terminated is important and sometimes overlooked. For both participants and plan sponsors, the finding of a partial termination is an important plan event because participants who were partially vested before the partial termination event will become fully vested due to the partial termination.
In Revenue Ruling 2007-43, issued today [...]

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The new immigration bill, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007 (S. 1348), raises another question. If alien, or undocumented, workers are recognized as employees for qualified plan purposes in plans which previously did not recognize them as eligible employees, what service will count for vesting purposes?
I think the answer is to this question [...]

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