Pension Legal Services

Vaccaro & Prisco LLP and its staff of pension attorneys render legal services to plan sponsors, involving the drafting, implementation and amendment of qualified retirement plans, including Money Purchase, Profit Sharing, 401(k), Target Benefit, Defined Benefit, and Employee Stock Ownership Plans. Our legal staff handles the submission of initial, restated and terminated plans to the Internal Revenue Service/Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation for favorable determination letters. The legal staff also prepares summary plan descriptions for qualified plans, drafts documentation regarding loans from qualified retirement plans, drafts, implements and amends non-qualified deferred compensation arrangements, reviews documentation regarding loans from financial institutions to Employee Stock Ownership Plans; prepares corporate stock restructuring, as required for implementation of Employee Stock Ownership Plans; and provides counseling to participants regarding income and estate tax aspects of retirement plan accumulations, distributions, rollovers, reversions and death benefits, including life insurance maintained in plans. Further, the firm provides counseling to plan sponsors regarding fiduciary responsibilities and prohibited transactions; counseling with regard to mergers, acquisitions and spinoffs; and representation in ERISA litigation including claims for benefits, fiduciary liability, bankruptcy and work out proceedings, Internal Revenue Service and Department of Labor audits.

Each of our cases is assigned to an associate attorney and a pension administrator. The associate attorney monitors the activity of the plan regarding compliance with the requirements of ERISA and the Internal Revenue Code and the pension administrator prepares the annual filing and valuation reports. When a case is taken over, a thorough review of the plan documents and operations of the plan is performed to identify any areas which should be addressed before the problems develop or recommend planning opportunities which have been overlooked.