Hertz Schram PC ERISA & Pension Lawyers

Age 50.This is the age at which you become eligible to put more of your wages into your 401(k) and IRA accounts, the so-called “catch-up contributions,” and to receive any matching employer contributions on those catchup amounts. Age 59 ½.With certain limited exceptions, if you take a distribution of your pension before age 59 ½, you will pay a 10% early withdrawal penalty in addition to the income tax otherwise payable on the distribution. If you wait until after age…

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In 2016, the Department of Labor (DOL) announced that it was stepping up efforts to ensure that terminated vested participants receive the pension benefits they are due under the terms of their plan. The DOL’s primary targets? Large Fortune 500 defined benefit pension plans whose Form 5500 filings show high numbers of participants eligible for benefits, but not receiving them. The impetus for this increased enforcement was that audits revealed that many plans had inadequate procedures for locating participants or…

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Natixis Global Asset Management and CoreData Research recently released their 2017 Global Retirement Index (Index)–their fifth such Index to date assessing retirement security in 43 developed countries. The Index utilizes 18 drivers of retirement security, grouped into four categories: health, finances, quality of life, and material well being. The data respecting the United States is disappointing. From 2016 to 2017, the U.S. slipped three places in overall retirement security-from number 14 to number 17–due to increasing income inequality and declines…

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Pension plan participants sometimes call me about a dispute they are having with the plan administrator as to whether they are vested in their pension benefits. As part of their inquiry, they want to know the rules governing pension vesting. Here are the general rules, along with a real-life example of how they worked for a caller who, after 20 years of service with the same employer, was denied a pension on the ground that she was not vested. In…

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Pension plan participants sometimes call me about a dispute they are having with the plan administrator as to whether they are vested in their pension benefits. As part of their inquiry, they want to know the rules governing pension vesting. Here are the general rules, along with a real-life example of how they worked for a caller who, after 20 years of service with the same employer, was denied a pension on the ground that she was not vested. In…

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The typical method of learning people’s financial well-being is to conduct a survey and ask them questions about their savings, assets, and income. However, people are often confused by survey questions. This is especially true when knowing what counts as income. For a number of years, the U.S. Census Bureau has conducted a survey to determine household income and poverty rates (Survey). In 2012, the Survey showed that, for persons age 65 and older, median household income was $33,800 and…

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When a pension plan participant dies, disputes sometimes arise as to the rightful beneficiary of the participant’s pension benefits. However, things get extra messy when it is discovered that the participant had TWO wives when he died! Here’s how one court sorted things out. In Ohiohealth Corp. v. Asiedu, No. 2:12-cv-761, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 12637 (S.D. Ohio Aug. 19, 2017), Francis K. Afrifi participated in two pension plans administered by Ohiohealth. Mr. Afrifi passed away in 2011, leaving behind…

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