Читать книгу Rightfully Yours - Gary A. Shulman - Страница 11

Perhaps you have heard the phrase, “He is only 40 percent vested under the profit-sharing plan.” What does this mean? Most defined contribution plans have vesting clauses that apply to employer contributions. The word vesting refers to that portion of the employee’s total account balance that he or she has earned. It’s the amount that’s non-forfeitable even if he or she were immediately to quit or retire. The portion of a participant’s benefits that are considered vested cannot be taken away. For example, many 401(k) plans have a vesting schedule as follows: After one year of service, the employee may become 20 percent vested in the contributions made to his or her account by the employer. The next year, the employee will be 40 percent vested in those contributions; the year after that, 60 percent vested, and so on, until he or she becomes 100 percent vested after five years of service. If a plan participant quits employment after two years of service, when he is 40 percent vested, this means that he or she is eligible to receive only 40 percent of the value of the contributions made to the plan by the employer. The remaining 60 percent is lost and forfeited back to the plan. The amount that is lost is often referred to as a forfeiture.

A plan’s vesting schedule, however, never applies to plan contributions made by the employee through voluntary payroll deductions. These employee contributions are always considered 100 percent vested. So, if your ex-husband elected to contribute a portion of his own paycheck to the plan, via convenient payroll deductions, he will always be 100 percent vested in his own contributions. These contributions can never be taken away from the employee or otherwise forfeited. Even if an employee quits after two years on the job, when he or she is only 40 percent vested in the contributions made by the employer, he or she will still be entitled to receive 100 percent of any employee contributions made to the plan during the two years of employment.