ERISA requires that plan assets be held in trust so that they are protected from claims of the employer. With pension plans, it is generally easy to determine when assets become plan assets and when they should be held in trust. For welfare benefit plans, such as health plans, the situation is more complicated. Employers
Understanding Employee Benefits and key developments in the employee benefits field and items of interest to our clients. MORE
Stinson LLP
Claims Administrators can be Liable for Violations of the Mental Health Parity Act
By Stinson LLP on
The Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act (MHPA) requires health plans to treat mental health and physical health benefits in much the same manner and precludes restrictions on mental health benefits that are not also found to apply to physical health benefits. The regulations enforcing those provisions are technical and complicated. A recent Second …
Not all Plans can Establish a Shortened Limitations Period for Filing Lawsuit
By Stinson LLP on
I recently blogged about a case in which a plan had established a shorter period of time (one year deadline) for filing a lawsuit, rather than relying on the state statute of limitation (six years) which would otherwise have applied. As I said in that blog, although courts have generally upheld reasonable plan deadlines, those …
Is Your Severance Policy an ERISA Plan?
By Stinson LLP on
I wrote an Insight article for firm clients on distinguishing an ERISA severance plan from a non-ERISA severance policy. For those of you not on that distribution list, the article is here.
Participants in Top Hat Plans Must Exhaust Administrative Remedies
By Stinson LLP on
So-called “Top Hat” plans are nonqualified deferred compensation plans for a select group of management or highly compensated employees. These executive compensation arrangements are exempt from many ERISA provisions, but are not exempt from ERISA’s claims procedure requirements. Therefore, top hat plans must provide a reasonable claims procedure.
ERISA compliant claims procedures can be written…
More Withdrawal Liability for Unsuspecting Business Owners
By Stinson LLP on
I recently blogged about a Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals decision that tagged a buyer of the assets of a company contributing to a multiemployer plan with withdrawal liability that the seller had not paid. A recent Ninth Circuit decision reached the same conclusion in a case where an owner shut down its business, which…
Don’t Play Hide the Ball with Your Claims Procedure
By Stinson LLP on
ERISA does not have a statute of limitations for lawsuits brought by participants to check claim benefits under the plan. Instead, courts borrow from similar state statutes of limitations. In a decision two years ago, the US Supreme Court upheld a disability plan’s one year limitations period, allowing the plan to impose that limitation rather…
A Summary Plan Description Can be a Plan Document
By Stinson LLP on
In a decision issued a couple of years ago, the United States Supreme Court held that a summary plan description that differed from the plan document could not be enforced as the plan document. The Court said that the summary plan description was supposed to describe the plan and it was the plan that should…
More Ways to be Hit With Withdrawal Liability
By Stinson LLP on
I have blogged (here, here, here and here) in the past about situations where employers unexpectedly found themselves liable for withdrawal liability imposed by a multiemployer plan. We can add a recent case from the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals to that list. Tsareff v. Manweb Services, Inc. involved a multiemployer…
Same Sex Marriage: Effect on Benefits
By Stinson LLP on
The United States Supreme Court recently held in Obergefell v. Hodges http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/14-556_3204.pdf that all states must recognize and allow marriages between same sex partners. Depending on an employer’s current employee benefits plan, certain provisions may need to be changed in light of this ruling.
For those employers who already provide spousal benefits to same sex…