Treasury explains how parents and guardians can claim the Trump Accounts that automatic enrollment created. The official app is the channel, a parent or guardian verifies identity and relationship to the child, and families with questions are pointed to TrumpAccounts.gov. The announcement doesn't change the employer-contribution rules the agencies proposed in August, which are still proposals, not final rules.

The Senate confirmed Keith Sonderling as Secretary of Labor on Wednesday, 47 to 41. He has served as the department's deputy secretary and, before that, as its acting head, so the benefits agenda he inherits is one he already helped run, from the alternative-assets executive order follow-through to the proxy voting guidance and EBSA's enforcement docket.

Ranking Member Bobby Scott is pushing a trio of bills he says belong in any future SECURE 3.0 package. The first would require that one-time retirement advice, including rollover recommendations, be given in the saver's best interest, and would stop advisers from avoiding fiduciary status through fine print saying their advice isn't the main basis for a decision. The second would expand participants' ability to sue over pension-plan mismanagement, responding to the Supreme Court's limits on standing in its 2020 Thole decision. The third, co-sponsored with Rep. Mark DeSaulnier and Sen. Tina Smith, would bar forced arbitration and class action waivers in ERISA plans and would outlaw the plan terms that give claim administrators deferential court review of their own benefit denials. The bills have been introduced but haven't become law. They map where Democrats want the statute to go.

The deadline depends on what the amendment does. Most plans adopting optional features under SECURE and SECURE 2.0 must update their documents by December 31, 2026. Required changes follow a different schedule tied to IRS guidance and the agency's annual Required Amendments lists, and later deadlines apply to certain union-negotiated plans, governmental plans, and public school 403(b) plans. These are deadlines for updating plan documents, not permission to delay following rules already in effect. One wrinkle from the IRS's September clarification helps sponsors: if the IRS later issues guidance about an optional feature a plan has already adopted, the further amendment implementing that guidance gets its own, later deadline. The IRS expects to issue final regulations on automatic enrollment, long-term part-time workers, and required minimum distributions, and the Roth catch-up requirement is expected to join the 2027 list, pushing that amendment deadline to December 31, 2029.

Mercer's GRIST covers the December 31, 2026 deadline for adopting SECURE and SECURE 2.0 plan amendments and fills in the rest of the year-end picture, including amendment deadlines under the CARES Act, the Miners Act, and the 2020 disaster-relief law, what the 2024 Required Amendments List already requires, and the routine interest rate and mortality table updates that plans without incorporation-by-reference language must adopt by year end. It covers both individually designed and preapproved plans.

TIAA's survey of 1,000 adults finds 53 percent worry more about outliving their savings than about underspending in retirement, and 83 percent carry financial concerns about living longer. Younger respondents were more worried about AI. Forty-two percent of Generation Z respondents are extremely or very concerned AI will hurt their career and retirement savings, against 28 percent of Generation X and baby boomer respondents combined. TIAA, which sells annuities, argues that guaranteed retirement income can help address those concerns.

A plain-English rundown of the employer side of the Treasury and IRS proposals. Employers could contribute up to $2,500 a year tax free with respect to each employee, a single cap that covers contributions to the employee's own account and to dependents' accounts combined, and the money counts toward an account's $5,000 annual contribution limit. The proposed regulations add the mechanics, including a separate written plan document, certification procedures on the beneficiary's age and dependent status, employee notices and annual statements, and data sharing with the account trustee, and eligibility can't favor highly compensated employees or their dependents. These remain proposed rules, so the details can change before they're final.

Groom reads the new Treasury-IRS priority guidance plan, the agencies' annual list of the rules they intend to write. It carries 121 projects and no benefits surprises, and the item employers have waited longest for is still just a promise. Many employers fund retiree medical benefits through a tax-exempt trust called a VEBA, and some of those trusts now hold more money than the retiree benefits need. Redirecting the surplus toward coverage for current employees risks a 100 percent excise tax, the IRS stopped issuing private rulings blessing such moves seven years ago, and the regulations that would give employers a safe answer remain on the to-do list. Employers sitting on overfunded VEBAs keep waiting.

The IRS has moved from guidance to audits on wellness arrangements marketed as payroll-tax savings. Morgan Lewis reports that fixed indemnity plans promising FICA savings and higher take-home pay, typically through a double-dip in which pre-tax premiums come back to employees as purportedly tax-free payments, are now drawing examinations, with employers on the hook for under-withheld taxes, penalties, and interest. The agency has disagreed with these designs in a steady stream of guidance since 2016 and flagged escalating concerns in its 2024 fixed-indemnity rulemaking. Promoters' opinion letters don't change the audit math.

The Hill's read on the second Make America Healthy Again summit, where administration officials shared panels with insurers and corporate executives. Two discussions stood out for employers. Officials including Secretary Kennedy and CMS administrator Oz pressed for wider use of AI in healthcare, with Kennedy claiming AI can outperform a doctor's second opinion. And the summit's opening panel put psychedelic medicine developers alongside an HHS lawyer, weeks after the FDA took public comment on therapeutic uses of psychedelics. UnitedHealth, Elevance, and Walmart were among the participating companies, and The Hill reports some companies were offered access to officials for a fee.

A Q&A on why employees pick the wrong plan: they shop by per-paycheck deduction and miss the drug-tier copays, coinsurance, and employer HSA contributions that decide actual cost. The advice is simple and travels well. Compare what each plan would cost for the care you actually use, and check that your doctors and prescriptions are covered. A familiar insurer's name doesn't guarantee a familiar network, a trap the piece calls incumbent bias.

Progyny's chief human resources officer argues that employees need help understanding their benefits throughout the year. A new child, an aging parent, or a chronic condition can make a benefit relevant long after open enrollment ends. She urges employers to judge their communications by whether employees can find and use the help they need, rather than by enrollment totals or email open rates.

Governor Newsom signed two bills on September 28. AB 2054 widens the circumstances in which a family member's military service qualifies a worker for paid family leave benefits: covered active duty will no longer require deployment to a foreign country, and will reach National Guard service, training, and state active duty, starting July 1, 2028 or earlier if the state's new claims system comes online first. AB 2292, effective January 1, 2027, bars doctors from charging administrative fees for the certification forms employees need to claim state disability or paid family leave benefits, what the governor's office called junk fees. Neither bill imposes direct employer obligations, but both touch how leaves get documented and administered.

A jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction voting leave survey ahead of the November 3 election. Counting the 50 states plus Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico: 23 jurisdictions require some form of paid time off to vote, seven require time off without specifying pay, and 22 states impose no requirement. There's no general federal requirement that private employers provide voting leave. The details are where employers trip: 19 states excuse time off when polls are open outside work hours, 16 require advance notice from the employee, and California and New York require a posted notice at least 10 days before the election.

When an employee leaves Verizon before the company's matching contributions vest, the money left behind, called forfeitures, has to go somewhere. Verizon's 401(k) plan gave its benefits committee a choice: use forfeitures to reduce the matching contributions Verizon owed, or use them to pay plan expenses. Year after year the committee chose the first option, at least $21.9 million in 2019 and $31.8 million in 2020, while participants paid plan expenses from their own accounts. Judge Arun Subramanian's September 30 opinion holds that the annual choice was a fiduciary decision, not protected plan design, and that participants plausibly allege the committee put Verizon's interests first. The loyalty, prudence, and oversight claims proceed to discovery; the prohibited-transaction claims are dismissed for good: in the court's reasoning, this internal allocation of forfeitures isn't a transaction with any counterparty at all. The court counted more than 20 district court decisions coming out both ways on these questions, with no appeals court yet to rule. A case schedule, including class certification, is due October 14.

The last claim standing in Phillips v. Cobham Advanced Electronic Solutions, the 401(k) suit against the aerospace company now owned by Honeywell, was that the plan refused participants' request for its investment policy statement, a failure that can carry personal penalties under ERISA. Judge Eumi Lee ended the case without deciding whether an investment policy statement is among the documents a plan must furnish; these plaintiffs lacked standing to ask. Two had cashed out their accounts about two years before the 2022 request, the third offered no evidence she would have done anything differently, and a missing document is not an injury by itself without some downstream consequence. The prudence claims over the plan's American Century target-date funds were dismissed last year under the Ninth Circuit's Anderson v. Intel decision, which the Supreme Court reviews on October 6. Anderson asks what investment comparisons participants must offer to support a claim that retirement-plan options performed poorly.

Five retired Major League Baseball umpires, including Joe West, say their pension plan has been shortchanging them for years. They challenge a benefit table that allegedly reduces annual pensions between ages 62 and 65 and charges them for a death benefit they never selected. They also allege errors in the ages used to calculate payments and missing increases for working beyond retirement age. West says the plan acknowledged an underpayment of about $144,000 but left roughly $133,000 unpaid. The umpires want the table corrected and their missing benefits paid with interest. The plan has not yet responded to the allegations.

Kathleen Macpeak is a securities lawyer at Morgan Lewis who suffers from migraines and cyclic vomiting syndrome. Unum paid her long-term disability claim for six years, then terminated it in 2023 after its reviewers assessed whether she could perform the duties of an attorney in the national economy, trial work, patents, and teaching included, none of it her practice. The plan's own terms define an attorney's regular occupation as her specialty in the practice of law. Judge Mary Kay Costello held that ignoring the specialty and treating the claimant as a generalist conflicted with the plan's plain language and was an abuse of discretion. The court ordered Unum to reinstate her benefits retroactive to the November 2023 termination, with interest.

Roberts Disability Law analyzes the September 18 Schuyler decision. Sun Life's first vocational expert said the claimant's sales job required standing and walking about six hours a day; its second expert, on appeal, called the same job sedentary, and Sun Life denied benefits on the second description without explaining the switch. Judge Ronnie Abrams held that failing to explain a disagreement with the insurer's own expert violates the Department of Labor's claims regulation, so Sun Life lost the deferential review its plan terms would otherwise have earned, and the court looked at the claim fresh. The record was too disputed for summary judgment, and the court sent the claim back to Sun Life to consider in full, including the claimant's favorable Social Security award.

A former registered nurse received benefits under his plan's own-occupation standard, but when the definition shifted to any occupation, Hartford's reviewing physicians (and his own primary care doctor) said he could handle full-time seated work. Judge Mark Mastroianni upheld the termination, giving the insurer's judgment the leeway the plan provides, and holding that Hartford could require objective evidence of functional limits, that its denial letter gave adequate notice of what an appeal needed, and that adding evidence for the same rationale in litigation isn't an improper new justification.

Roberts Disability Law analyzes the Young decision. The claimant argued that a Maine law banning discretionary clauses in disability policies stripped Aetna of deferential review. Judge Patrick Schiltz held the statute reaches only policies issued, continued, or renewed after it took effect in 2019, and that paying an existing claim is a legal obligation, not a renewal, so the 2014 policy kept its discretionary clause. The court also rejected the argument that seven years of payments shifted the burden to Aetna to prove improvement: under the plan, proving continued disability stayed the claimant's job at all times.

Dairy Farmers of America closed its St. Albans Creamery in Vermont, the Teamsters local took the closure to arbitration as anti-union retaliation, and the company announced it would stop paying its 85% share of health premiums for the 44 bargaining-unit members on October 1. Judge William Sessions III ordered the premiums continued until arbitration concludes, with an exception for anyone who lands coverage with a new employer. The judge found that lost health coverage is the kind of harm an arbitrator can't later repair, and courts can order an employer to preserve the status quo so that arbitration doesn't become a hollow formality. Employee declarations described a $15 copay becoming a $3,000-a-month prescription and family COBRA premiums near $2,500. The court declined to force an arbitration date, since the parties' chosen arbitrator isn't available until January, and noted a disputed internal memo proposing 'idling operations' aimed at 'Union Decertification,' which the company says is an AI-generated fake.

Airlines for America is challenging Colorado's Healthy Families and Workplaces Act as applied to flight and ground crews at five member airlines, arguing the federal Airline Deregulation Act preempts it and that it unconstitutionally burdens interstate commerce. Chief Judge Daniel Domenico denied the state's summary judgment motion on both claims. He wrote that the state makes a persuasive case under the governing law, as he also said at the pleading stage, but the record is now a duel between experts: the airlines' expert found that as employee sick rates rise, flight delays and cancellations rise too, while the state's expert says the evidence doesn't show the law measurably changed airline services at all. Weighing expert credibility is a trial job, not a summary judgment one. The sick leave law has covered employees working in Colorado, airline crews included, since July 2020; what a factfinder must now decide is whether its effect on airline operations is tenuous or significant.

Judge David O. Carter certified three classes of Sodexo health plan participants who paid the plan's nicotine surcharge: two damages classes on whether the surcharge program violated ERISA's requirements and the plan's own terms, and a fiduciary-duty class certified because individual suits would risk inconsistent rulings. Certification follows a published Ninth Circuit decision last year holding that Platt never agreed to arbitrate his claims and that the arbitration agreement's class-action waiver couldn't block claims brought on the plan's behalf. Employers that charge tobacco users higher premiums now face the compliance questions at class scale: did the program offer a qualifying alternative way to avoid the surcharge, tell employees about it, and refund what shouldn't have been charged?

When a veteran waives military retirement pay to receive disability pay instead, the waived amount disappears from what a divorce court can divide, and an ex-spouse's promised share can disappear with it. Many divorce settlements respond with indemnification provisions: the veteran agrees to make the former spouse whole if a later disability election cuts her share. The North Dakota Supreme Court held in March that federal law voids those provisions even when the parties agreed to them, reading the U.S. Supreme Court's 2017 Howell decision to bar any workaround. Richard Marschner waived all of his National Guard retirement pay for disability pay, and Roxane Marschner's bargained-for share went to zero. The Supreme Court granted review on Thursday. For anyone drafting divorce settlements that divide military retirement benefits, the case will set the ground rules.

Every investment option in Federated Hermes' own $660 million 401(k) plan was a Federated fund, and a participant alleges that 17 of them trailed the benchmarks the plan's own fiduciaries had chosen, that one fund stayed on the menu while outside investors pulled more than $1 billion from it, and that the plan paid roughly double what similar plans paid for recordkeeping. Judge Robert Colville let nearly everything proceed: the prudence claims on both fund selection and fees, the loyalty claim (participants plausibly served as a captive investor base for the firm's fund business), and both prohibited-transaction claims, applying the Supreme Court's Cunningham rule that the exemption allowing in-house funds is a defense for the company to prove, not a hurdle for the participant to clear. Only the failure-to-monitor count was dismissed, with 21 days to replead. A footnote points to the Supreme Court's October 6 argument in Anderson, on what comparisons participants must offer to support claims that retirement-plan investments performed poorly, and the court here invited the parties to seek new briefing if that decision bears on this ruling.

Lincoln stopped paying disability benefits to a longtime Duke Energy worker whose job involved operating and repairing natural gas equipment, and a federal judge has now ordered the insurer to reconsider. Lincoln's three medical reviewers never examined Melinda Oliver-Smith, even though the policy allowed an examination and her psychiatric symptoms raised serious questions about working safely. Lincoln also failed to adequately explain why it disagreed with a Social Security disability award based on overlapping evidence, an award it had required her to pursue and that reduced what Lincoln itself owed. The court sent the claim back for another review rather than awarding benefits, because the record didn't clearly establish entitlement throughout the disputed period.

A retrospective on six July decisions: the Ninth Circuit's refusal to compel arbitration in the Capital Group 401(k) self-dealing suit, the largely denied dismissal motion in the O'Reilly Automotive tobacco-surcharge case, Elevance's forfeiture-suit dismissal with 40 days to amend, the standing-based dismissal of the ATI and State Street pension risk transfer suit, the Dish Network target-date-fund case ordered to trial, and the D.C. Circuit's partial reversal of a $13 million withdrawal-liability judgment won by the IAM National Pension Fund.

Fisher Phillips' quarter-opening deadline calendar for retirement and health plans, with the firm's warning that a missed date can cost more than paperwork, up to and including a plan's safe harbor status. The detailed calendar ships as an attached guide, a desk reference for the quarter in which many year-end amendment deadlines come due.