Hertz Schram PC ERISA & Pension Lawyers

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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For the ninth year in a row, Mercer (a global consulting firm with expertise in pensions and investments) and the Australian Centre for Financial Studies have collaborated on research studying the retirement systems of 30 countries and published their findings in the 2017 Melbourne Mercer Global Pension Index (2017 Study). The main objectives of the Study were to (i) benchmark each country’s retirement system using more than 40 different factors, (ii) determine the primary shortcomings of each country’s retirement system,…

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Harris Poll recently conducted an online survey on behalf of the Nationwide Retirement Institute to gage Americans’ outlook on retirement. There were 1,012 responders (i) age 50 or older, (ii) retired or planning to retire within the next 10 years, and (iii) collecting or expecting to collect Social Security benefits. Their responses are sobering. Key findings? While 21% of future retirees believe their lives in retirement will be better, 28% of recent retirees reported that their lives in retirement are…

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Analysts for WalletHub recently surveyed our nation’s 150 most populated cities for four attributes retirees typically seek when considering where to retire: (i) affordability, (ii) activities, (iii) quality of life, and (iv) health care (the Survey). The analysts utilized 40 different metrics, grading each on a 100-point scale, with 100 being the most favorable. The cities were then ranked by their total point score, with a rank of 1 being the best and a rank of 150 being the worst….

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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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ERISA [the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, which governs most private-sector pension plans] seeks to protect employees’ interests in their employer-provided pension benefits. Therefore, in order to recover pension benefits under an ERISA-governed plan, one must be an employee of the sponsoring employer. The same holds true if you work for a governmental employer; that is, you must be an employee of the governmental entity. Disputes sometimes arise when parties disagree as to whether a worker is an employee or,…

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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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According to the Consumer Bankruptcy Project, retirees are the fastest-growing segment of our population filing for bankruptcy, and 39% of bankrupt retirees do so on account of medical expenses. This sad statistic is largely attributable to (i) a lack of awareness regarding the amount of money needed to cover out-of-pocket medical expenses in retirement; (ii) misunderstandings about Medicare coverage; and (iii) failing to consult with a certified financial planner, estate planning attorney, and/or elder care attorney well before planned retirement….

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