After working for the company for a number of years, an employee quit and was rehired after a year and a half. According to the plan, an employee is eligible for a match after 6 months and then is 100% vested in the match, but the plan is silent on addressing a match after a break in service.

Is there a general rule: does the employee have to rewait the 6 months for a match? Or, is it up to the employer/the plan is controlling (which means the plan must be amended to address this issue)?

The terms of your plan document would control this situation. In the prototype we use, a rehire is immediately eligible upon rehire. There is a difference though whether we're talking about eligibility (which it sounded like) or some kind of accrual requirement / allocation condition on the match. Without an accrual requirement on the matching contribution, if the person is immediately eligible upon rehire, they should receive it if they defer.

I didn't clarify that, did I? An employee is eligible to participate immediately......there are no age or service requirements. So, an employee, upon rehire, can begin making deferrals immediately. The confusion has arisen because the individually designed plan is silent on whether matches should begin again if the participant was receiving matching contributions before. I can't seem to find this addressed in the IRC and I am stumped.

You seem very knowledgeable and I apologize for this but: I don't understand your statement that "(w)ithout an accrual requirement on the matching contribution, if the person is immediately eligible upon rehire, they should receive it if they defer."

I'm sorry for being dense.....what does this mean?

If a person is eligible, he or she is usually eligible for all plan purposes, unless the plan imposes different eligibility requirements for the deferral portion of the plan, match portion, etc.

Some plan contributions require a participant to meet certain conditions before an allocation is made on their behalf. This is often the case with a profit-sharing contribution (e.g., you need to be there on the last day of the plan year, worked 1000 hours). Matching contributions may also have an allocation condition, but this is not as common. Often the only condition for receiving a matching contribution is that the employee has deferred. (This is often the case when matching contributions are made per payroll.) This is what I meant by my statement in the previous post. Any help?