457 Plan Written Documents

Rules governing 457 plan written documents include: 

• The written plan document must contain all the applicable provisions of Treas. Regs. §1.457-4 through §1.457-10.
• The plan must be adopted and the plan document exist before the first day of the month in which the compensation is paid or made available in order to provide that compensation has been properly deferred by salary reduction, and an agreement providing for the deferral must have been entered into prior to the deferral.
• Certain provisions are optional, such as the age 50 catch-up limit, the special 457 catch-up limit, distributions for unforeseeable emergences, loans, plan-to-plan transfers, additional deferral elections, acceptance of rollovers, and involuntary distributions of smaller accounts. However, the plan document must contain provisions for any of the options that the employer wishes to include in the plan.