Stephanie A. Smithey

Ms. Smithey devotes her practice to all aspects of employee benefits law. She represents clients with respect to qualified retirement plans and health and welfare plans, assisting them with a variety of plan design, compliance, and administration issues for all types of pension, health and welfare benefit plans.Ms. Smithey advises her clients as to ERISA, MPPAA, HIPAA, COBRA, PPACA, the Internal Revenue Code, as well as other federal and state laws applicable to employee benefit plans and plan sponsors. She assists clients with IRS and DOL audits, as well as internal compliance audits and plan corrections. She regularly counsels clients as to the scope of their fiduciary duties and how they may seek to limit fiduciary exposure. Ms. Smithey frequently assists health plans in complying with the health care reform laws as well as the HIPAA privacy security rules and provides in-house training for employers and other plan personnel.In addition to counseling clients as to how to comply with the many laws that apply to their employee benefit plans, Ms. Smithey advises them how to handle benefit plan-related disputes in an effort to avoid litigation. In this context, she has counseled employers, insurers, third party administrators, trustees, and other plan fiduciaries.