



		Corporate Transactions

		Retirement Plans

		ESOPs

		Welfare Benefits Plans

		ERISA Exempt Plans

		Legal Compliance Audits For Benefit Plans

ERISA Exempt Plans

Our capabilities as employee benefits counsel extends to the representation of municipalities, governmental bodies, religious institutions and other tax exempt organizations sponsoring employee benefit plans. Our experience in this area includes the design and implementation of welfare and retirement benefit plans, including church plans, and counseling plan administrators on compliance and general administrative issues.

Governmental Plans

We work with tax-exempt and governmental organizations, including municipalities and school systems. Our services include counseling clients on plan design and administrative matters, drafting and implementing retirement and welfare benefit plans, and drafting compensation agreements for executives, including tax-deferred Section 457 plans and other programs.

Tax Exempt and Church Plans

Included among Janich Law Group's clients are denominational churches and church affiliated institutions of higher education that maintain retirement and welfare benefit plans for their employees. Many of these clients hire us to design, implement and advise regarding plans that qualify for church plan status under IRS rules, due to our in-depth knowledge of the federal tax rules and requirements governing these plans and our sensitivity to the unique needs of religiously affiliated plan sponsors.

As part of our continuing role as plan advisors, we provide regular consultation and advice services regarding various administrative matters to ensure that church plan status is retained. Our church plan practice covers retirement and welfare plan issues, as well as health care, death and disability benefit and cafeteria plans.

Among the services that we offer are the following:

Tax law counseling;

Advising on retirement and welfare benefit plan design, compliance and administration;

Obtaining IRS church plan rulings;

Assistance with vendor selection and contracting.

Representative Engagement - Governmental Plans

Governmental 457 Plan Amendment - A local municipality hired us to review its Section 457 plan in order to comply with IRS regulations relating to new trust requirements. After reviewing the governing state statutes to ascertain whether they expressly prohibited the municipality from placing its plan assets in trust, we prepared plan amendments to ensure that the plan remained an eligible deferred compensation plan in full compliance with the tax rules. We also worked with the village attorney in preparing an appropriate ordinance required to adopt the necessary plan changes. Finally, we made recommendations to the municipality on additional plan design changes which they subsequently adopted.

Representative Engagements - Church Plans

Educational Institution Pension and Welfare Benefit Plans - We were retained to conduct an audit of the retirement and benefits plans sponsored and maintained by a religious affiliated educational institution to ascertain whether the institution would be able to minimize the costs of administering the plans. As part of the audit, we analyzed the institution's governing structure and concluded that it qualified for church plan status, exempt from IRS filing requirements. Subsequently, we prepared and submitted a church plan ruling request to the IRS, which was granted, thus enabling the institution to continue operating its plans at substantially reduced administrative costs.

Amendment to Church Sponsored Defined Benefit Plan - We were contacted by a religious organization to consider plan design changes following its discovery of a significant surplus of assets held in its defined benefit plan. After reviewing the plan and determining the objectives of this client, we recommended that the plan be amended to revise the pension formula to provide for a more generous level of benefits. In doing so, we worked closely with our client's plan actuary to confirm that any such revision would not overextend the plan in the future.

We designed and drafted the necessary plan amendment, incorporating several additional client requested changes, and updated the plan's summary of benefits. Our client also desired to provide retirement type benefits to a long time employee who was no longer working in a church affiliated capacity. We drafted an agreement that paid her deferred compensation upon retirement that was comparable to the compensation she would have received had she qualified to participate in the church's defined benefit plan.