Does anyone have any thoughts about whether an employer who maintains a Top Hat plan (and has already filed) needs to file a statement with the Department of Labor if the employer adds another Top Hat plan? The CFR states that "[o]nly one statement need be filed for each employer maintaining one or more plans." Do any employers actually submit a new statement upon establishing a new Top Hat plan?

A second filing is common because it is not that much trouble and removes any doubt about interpretation or policy.

The conditions for the waiver in the regulation could not be clearer: file once and only once. Why do what is not required?

I agree w/ jpod-- the language seems clear. The reason I ask, however, is that a lawyer at my firm informally spoke to someone from the DOL, and the person from the DOL said that a new filing is required for a new plan. I haven't been able to find anything else on the DOL's webpage or in its opinion or informational letters that say that.

I've heard and read (probably on this Board) that DOL will say that, but there is nothing in the regulation that would support that interpretation (assuming it really is an "interpretation," as opposed to a pipe dream).

You have just spent more time in inquiry than it would have taken for a filing. If you had spent the time filing, you would have nothing to worry about except the loss of postage, whether or the DOL can read a statute (which it cannot sometimes).

QDRO: This is, after all, a discussion board. This discussion may someday be useful to a poor soul who fears that he or she has blown the 120-day deadline for a second filing, only to learn that there is no reason to pursue or pay for DFVCP relief.

That would be a different discussion. What to do to avoid issues and what to do after certain facts have set in are two different matters.

I have no quarrel with your argument based on a literal reading of the statute and I think no second filing is required. But I advise a second filing, one of the few times I advise to run with the herd.

Thanks everyone for your help.

For what it's worth: I called the DOL and eventually was referred to someone from the Office of the Chief Accountant (part of the Pension and Welfare Benefits Administration). She "recommended" that a sponsor file again, but when I asked her to substantiate her recommendation by pointing to any authority, she could not. Rather, it was based on how she interpreted the reg.