I have a QDRO with Continental Can. It was sold to Kiewit, then became Viatech Continental Can Company, which was a wholly owned subsidiary of Suiza Foods Corporation. Suiza bought Dean Foods and changed the name of the company to Dean Foods.

I am writing Dean Foods to determine who is responsible for payment on the pension benefits granted by the QDRO.

Has anyone else dealt with this kind of issue? I hope I am going about it correctly.

Thanks for any insight or suggestions.

Mary

You say that you have a QDRO with Continental Can which is a company that ceased to exist sometime in the mid 1980's. However, you say that it was sold to Kiewit, so I have to assume that your QDRO is connected to a division that was sold before US Can took the rest.

Why would a DRO be issued to a long defunct company and which plan administrator said it was a QDRO ?

But you then reference Dean Foods which was acquired by Suiza around 2000.

Who has been paying the benefits all these years or Who has been issuing participant information and notices etc ?

In fact how do you know that pension benefits exist without knowing exactly where etc ?

George:

Before you ask the OP who asking for assistance (and would obviously not know how to answer your question) "why would a QDRO be issued to a long defunct company" you should research the application of a QDRO to a sucessor employer plan.

According to the Senate Finance Committe report on REA "The committee intends that an order that is qualified is to remain qualified with respect to a sucessor plan of the same employer or a plan of a sucessor employer within the meaning of IRC 414(a). " A QDRO that was accepted by Continential Can will be enforceable against all plans of sucessor employers to CC in which the benefits are held. The issues is finding the plan where the benefit now reside.

What do mean by "how do know your benefits exist without knowing exactly where, etc"? How is the OP supposed to understand this question?

Is your benefit under a defined benefit (DB) or a defined contribution (DC) type of plan. DB plans are sometimes called retirement or pension plans. You need to contact the administrator of the suscessor plan that holds the assets to the CC plan.

You may also contact a locator service such as Judy Diamond Associates on the internet to see if the they can determine the status of the plan but they will charge a fee to find the plan's status . There may be locator services that you can contact who will track down your benefit for a fee.

If your benefits were held in a DB plan that has been terminated you can contact a government agency, the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation in Washington, DC to collect the benefits. There is no way to collect benefits from terminated DC plans.

It would be helpful if you have an employer id # for the sponsor and plan number in your records that can be used in correspondence about the plans.

Unless the successive succesor plans all never ever sent out any sort of notice or communication in the over 20 years since Continental Can, I do not see how the OP does not know who is now responsible. As a result I have the questions.

If I assume that the successor plans had no reason to send out any sort of communication to this QDRO beneficiary, I would then have to wonder why there was no monitoring of plan participation,, retirement date etc. which would have kept the OP up to date and informed over the years. I would have thought that it would be in a beneficiary's best interest to keep in touch with the plan since you could say that it is their money.

If I were a QDRO beneficiary I would certainly want to know retirement eligibility, retirement date, expected benefit, how payments will be made by whom etc.

Since the OP has apparently not kept in touch or up to date, I think that it is quite logical to wonder what the OP really knows.

Mary, the posts by MJB were a good starting point for you. He, as always, offers good response.

There are some people who are willing to help others with questions, as MJB clearly demonstrates. Sadly, there are also others who think that they should grill the person posting the question for reasons that only they could understand. Usually, those replies seem to blame the person for being in need of assistance.

Good luck with your search for answers, and don't be afraid to use this board in the future. As evidenced by MJB, there are many people here willing to help, with only a few that will not. (I expect objection that will be based upon a need to get all facts allowing for a "complete answer". Sure...)

Lastly, thanks to MJB for being one of the "good guys".

Why do you believe that the plan administrator has been sending out notices?

For the last 25 years US corporations and their subisdaries have been bought and sold like commodities on the world financial markets for tax or or accounting reasons. During the tech boom some telecom companies were sold once a year for several years and often end up being owned by companies located in foreign countries with no knowledge of the requirements of US laws.

When a company is sold the first employees to go are the personnel and HR departments because they are considered to be overhead whose cost can be eliminated without affecting profits. It may be months or years before anyone at the acquiring entity attempts to contact participants or the company may be sold again. Frequently the work of reviewing benefit records and contacting plan participants is outsourced to the lowest bidder who will minimize the amount of work done to fit the budget. Records are shipped off to storage for a few years before they are shredded as a cost savings measure before all benefits are paid. Companies may not send out notices to save on expenses.
Electronic data cannot retrieved be after 5-10 years because no one can access the format used to store the data or because the data has degraded.
Change of address notices sent by participants are frequenetly directed to an address no longer used by the Plan sponsor or acquiror or there are no personnel available to process the change of address.

Plan participants should never leave their retirement money in a former employer's plan if it can be rolled over because they may not be able to locate the plan administrator years later.

That is probably the most useful advice in all of these replies!

MaryinRed - When you write to Dean Foods, ask for a statement of the status of your account.

I strongly recommend that you include a copy of your QDRO for their reference. The QDRO shows your rights to benefits, and it may help them if they have to do some digging through their records.

Also ask for a Summary Plan Descripton (SPD), which is a summary of their retirement plan. It includes information on distributions, etc.

I think it is a very good idea for you to contact Dean Foods to be sure you are in their system and to get any account information you can.

Good luck.

All the advice given is great. I would like to add one suggestion. Call your Ex and ask who you need to contact?

Thanks to everyone. I will find the QDRO paperwork (in storage but I will find it) and ask my ex-husband if the plan administrators have kept in contact with him.

I spoke with Ball's pension administrator and with Dean Food's....and neither have my ex husband or me on their system.

I will keep you posted on how this progresses.

Thanks so much for giving this some thought. The key is to find where the benefits reside currently. A bit like a title search!
Thanks again

Mary

HOW DO I FIND THE FUNDS?

I've had the same problem, though there is no QDRO yet because I don't know where the assets are. Opposing party was employed by Columbia Management and continued to be employed after it was acquired by Fleet Boston (circa 2004). Fleet Boston was acquired by Bank of America. I sent a subpoena to Bank of America. Fidelity Employer Services Compay has responded that they have no information, but FESCo has only been the record-keeper since 2006. How do I get relevant plan information?

Columbia Management had 2 plans (PS and money purchase). Both were merged into the Fleet plan during 2003.
Both plans used an outside consultant (TPA?) to assist: DPA, Inc. I don't know if this company still exists.

You can search for yourself at FreeERISA.com. You will need your own (free) login ID.

Shouldn''t this info have been obtained during the asset search ? If not, what about just asking the participant ? I would think that telling you would be easier than responding to a request from your lawyer via a sub poena, depositon or otherwise.

You need to contact the ERISA/QDRO lawyer in B of A's law dept and ask what happpened to the Fleet DC plans after acquisition by B of A and who has the records. If the employee became a Fleet employee it is likely that his assets in the Columbia mgt plan would have been transferred to Fleet's DC plans. You need to determine if Fleets DC plans were consolidated with B of A plans. If they were not there will be separate records for the Fleet plans which BofA can tell you. Another question is whether the benefits were removed from either the Fleet or the B of A plan prior to 2006 when Fidelity became the Administrator which may explain why Fidelity has no record.