Practice Areas & Industries: Baker & Daniels LLP

Practice/Industry Group Overview

Employee benefits programs are highly valued by employees, and financially significant to employers. Employers provide such programs as a means to:

• Attract and retain valuable employees
• Foster sound financial planning
• Take advantage of tax benefits
• Deal with labor relations challenges

Unfortunately, these programs are also highly regulated and increasingly complex. ERISA, COBRA, HIPAA, EGTRRA - those and other benefits laws have become prime examples of federal constraints that too often frustrate good intentions and confuse both employers and employees.

Meeting Your Needs

To help our clients offer attractive benefits programs without falling into serious legal traps, our Employee Benefits attorneys concentrate on the full range of benefits law - from plan design to litigation, from health insurance to stock options, from corporate finance to union disputes. Even though the scope is wide, the entire benefits practice at Baker & Daniels shares a common set of principles that include quality analysis and counsel, practical solutions, and clear communication.

Services Available

Qualified retirement plans

• Design, preparation, government-compliance, and counseling involving 401(K) plans
• Defined benefit and defined contribution pension plans
• Employee stock ownership plans
• Stock bonus and profit-sharing plans
• Multiemployer pension plans.

Health, Disability and Other Welfare Plans

• Design, preparation, government-compliance, and counseling services regarding insured and self-insured health plans, cafeteria plans, VEBAs, and COBRA compliance

Executive Compensation Programs

• Advice and plan preparation involving stock option programs
• Phantom stock plans
• Change in control arrangements
• Excess plans
• Other nonqualified deferred compensation and incentive arrangement programs

Corporate Transactions

• Analysis of legal and financial effects of employee benefits plans on acquisitions, sales, and lending transactions.

Personal Financial Planning

• Advice concerning retirement-plan elements of estate planning and marital dissolution.

Litigation of Employee Benefits Issues

• Plan termination disputes
• Fiduciary duty issues
• ERISA preemption
• Plan interpretation claims

Education and Training Programs

Includes a wide variety of benefits-related education and training programs and workshops, including workshops for:

• plan fiduciaries;
• plan participant education programs;
• HIPAA privacy training; and
• a myriad of seminars and workshops for benefits managers and administrators.