"Participant defers $30,000 all Roth across two plans in 2023. Age 35. ($15k each plan, say) It's too late to take out the excess. So does that mean the earnings on the excess will stay in there and get earnings on top of that and come out tax free in 40-50 years?"

"We as a plan sponsor place a 'hold' on a participant's benefits to prevent distributions when we receive notice that a DRO is being drafted. Our record-keeper freezes benefits for a maximum of 6 months, but we have DROs that are submitted and qualified as long as four YEARS after we first receive notice that a DRO is being drafted. How many times can we renew a freeze before we give up? We send model DROs to the parties for their use but we have had changes in recordkeepers and fund lineups and if any of these years-old DROs come in based on obsolete models we are going to have a difficult time complying, not to mention that participants can still manage their investments and may no longer hold the funds they held at the time the DRO was first discussed. Our own DRO procedures do not contain a specific time that a hold will be in place. It just states that the hold will last until the earliest of certain events occurs -- receipt of a DRO, notification that a DRO will not be requested, etc. I am not sure this is compliant. Thoughts would be appreciated."

"For the new compliance questions, 14a, 14b, 15 (5500-SF) the DOL instructions seem a bit ambiguous to me. Is a 403(b) plan required to input the opinion letter # on line 15? For 14a, as unlikely as it probably is, a 403(b) plan may use a qualified plan to pass 410(b), although the reverse is not true. So this could be checked 'no.' 14b -- seems like it shouldn't need to be checked at all, but perhaps 'N/A' would be appropriate, even if unnecessary. 15 -- the instructions seem to exclude an opinion letter on a 403(b) plan. What are y'all doing on these?"