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ERISA & Employee Benefit Plans
MONDRESS MONACO PARR LOCKWOOD PLLC
MMPL is a Seattle, Washington law firm of highly skilled attorneys representing ERISA and employee benefit plans and trust funds, their sponsors, fiduciaries and trustees, and institutional service providers throughout the Pacific Northwest and nationwide. Since the firm’s entire practice is concentrated on employee benefits law, we offer comprehensive and experienced tax, fiduciary and trust, ERISA compliance, and litigation counseling. Learn more.
Legal Developments Impacting Health & Welfare Plans 2024 Year-End Update
Click here for a printer-friendly version. HHS continues to assess penalties for HIPAA violations, including a $4.75 million settlement with a medical center over an employee’s sale of protected health information (PHI) to identity thieves. HHS also assessed penalties for failures to timely give individuals access to their health information. New HHS regulations strengthen the privacy of PHI relating to reproductive health care, such as by prohibiting disclosure of PHI to law enforcement investigating a patient for obtaining a [...]
Legal Developments Impacting Retirement Plans 2024 Year-End Update
Click here for a printer-friendly version. As discussed in our prior January 2024 bulletin, plaintiffs’ class action firms have taken aim at common and longstanding practices of 401(k) plans regarding the use of forfeitures to reduce employer contributions, with over two dozen lawsuits filed against large corporate plans in the last year alone. These cases are in their early stages and court rulings to date have been mixed, with courts granting defendants’ motions to dismiss in five cases and [...]
Summary of SECURE Act 2.0 Guidance Released in 2023
Click here for a printer-friendly version. The SECURE 2.0 Act of 2022 (“SECURE Act 2.0”) was signed into law on December 29, 2022 as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023.Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023, Pub. L. 117-328, 136 Stat. 4,459 (2022). SECURE Act 2.0 refers specifically to Division T of this session law. SECURE Act 2.0 builds on the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Act of 2019 (the “SECURE Act”) and aims to modernize the retirement [...]
Lawsuits and Proposed IRS Regulations Conflict on the Use of Forfeitures in Defined Contribution Plans
Click here for a printer-friendly version. For decades IRS regulations and guidance have allowed employers with qualified 401(k) plans wide discretion to decide how to use plan account forfeituresForfeitures may include, for example, non-vested employer contributions in a former employee’s 401(k) account which the employee forfeited after a termination of employment. —including paying plan expenses, reducing an employer’s future contributions, or re-allocating to other participants, in accordance with the plan terms.For example, the House Conference Report regarding the Tax [...]