No good deed goes unpunished. Those of us working with 401(k)
plans are familiar with this sentiment. An employee benefit
plan, as the name implies, is supposed to benefit employees.
Yet benefit plans – particularly 401(k) plans –
can be sources of aggravation for many. In addition to the
threat of lawsuits, employers must also grapple with the
difficulty of crafting lengthy, complex plans using language
that is legally precise yet understandable to the average
plan administrator.
While ERISA litigation has proliferated in recent years, with
the Supreme Court issuing four ERISA decisions in 2020
alone,1 the Court under the leadership of
Chief Justice John Roberts has pointed plan sponsors toward a
way to help control plan disputes. The Roberts Court's
ERISA jurisprudence has re-awakened the idea that one of
ERISA's key tenets is that a plan's written terms
matter. In other words, if plan sponsors want to reduce their
exposure to litigation, one way to do
