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| staff are proud to drive American/Union made cars. |
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represented by AFSCME and support staff are represented by
OPEIU. |
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The purpose of a prepaid legal services plan is to give working and middle income people access to the legal justice system. Wealthy people and corporations can afford legal advice and representation. Many poor people can find legal help at a legal aid office. Working and middle income Americans have the greatest trouble affording and even locating help for their everyday legal needs.
The UAW Legal Services Plan and other prepaid legal services (there are hundreds throughout the country) are based on one idea – a well-run legal services plan can provide basic legal assistance, that would otherwise be unaffordable, in a very cost-effective manner.
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Having a prepaid legal services plan provides the following benefits to workers, their families and their employers:
1) Costly legal problems are avoided when people have access to advice and consultation from a knowledgeable legal adviser;
2) Productivity is enhanced and absenteeism is reduced when workers can focus on their jobs, not their legal problems;
3) Access to the legal justice system (at a very low cost per member) is opened to low and middle income workers who are often disproportionately affected by certain types of consumer fraud, mortgage scams and other legal problems.
The UAW Legal Services Plan addresses workers' problems in just such a cost effective manner assisting thousands of members each year. The majority of legal problems are handled by providing advice and drafting documents. Other legal problems involve more extensive work – but are still handled in a cost-effective manner.
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Our client had an adjustable rate mortgage with a current interest rate of 11%. Although the clients were current on their payments, one spouse was about to retire and the other had lost her job. A Plan attorney assisted through negotiation in reducing the interest rate 5 points and to a fixed rate. This allowed them to keep their house.The Plan assisted two elderly widows who had been sent to the same lender by a particular contractor. This lender arranged loans with high interest rates that the widows could not afford. Even though the work was not finished and what was finished was shoddy, the lender began foreclosure proceedings. The Plan attorney was successful in stopping the foreclosure and forcing the contractor to properly repair the roofs. A client badly needed some extra time to stay in a rental unit because of her husband's illness. A Plan attorney obtained that extra time because after reviewing the eviction document noticed that it did not comply with state law.A client returned home from vacation to discover $11,000 in ATM withdrawals he had not made. The bank at first refused to refund the money, however once a Plan attorney became involved, the bank eventually refunded the entire amount.
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After recent tax law changes, the beneficiary of your 401(k) or Individual Retirement Account (IRA) will soon be able to roll over the account without a tax penalty, even if he or she is not your spouse.
Currently, if you own a 401(k) or IRA, only your spouse after your death can defer taxes on the inherited account by rolling it over to his or her 401(k) or IRA. If your beneficiary is not your spouse, the normally required immediate payout of the funds from the account, typically in a lump sum, could result in a significant tax bite. The Pension Protection Act of 2006, which became law on August 17, 2006, has eliminated this tax consequence. Read more below
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Concerned that the cost of nursing home care will deplete their assets, some senior citizens try to plan their estates so as to qualify financially for Medicaid nursing home benefits. A strategy some have used is to gift or transfer property to beneficiaries before entering the nursing home, so that the property will not be counted as an asset in the Medicaid application process. Such a transfer normally triggers a "Medicaid disqualification period." Also called a "transfer penalty period," this is a length of time in which the applicant is disqualified from benefits and is calculated to approximate the number of months of nursing home care the gifted property could have paid for. Read More Below
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Have you ever wondered why at the end of the year, your W-2 or 1099 tells you that you have to report approximently $80 of income for your legal services benefit? [NOTE: This is not to say that you are required to pay $80 for this benefit. Instead it means that you pay taxes on that amount based on your individual tax bracket which ranges from 15% to 33%. That means that for most members the actual tax is between $12 and $25 depending on your tax bracket.]
The answer is that the United State Congress took away favorable tax treatment for group legal services plans, effective June 30, 1992. Prior to that time the money that it takes to run the plans, the employer’s payments to the legal services plan, was tax exempt to you. While it was income, just like wages and other benefits such as health, dental and vision coverage, there was a special section of the tax code, which kept you from being taxed on it. That provision, called Section 120 of the Internal Revenue Code, expired on June 30, 1992 and has never been reenacted. Instead you are required to pay taxes on that amount based on your individual tax bracket which ranges from 15% to 33%. That means that for most members the actual tax is between $12 and $25 depending on your tax bracket.
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copyright 2000, UAW Legal Services Plans. |
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