This advisory reminds qualified retirement plan sponsors of upcoming deadlines for amending qualified retirement plans and highlights other action items for plan sponsors to consider.
Qualified Plan Amendments and Other Changes
Amendments for changes in law
December 31, 2026 is a required amendment deadline for most calendar-year qualified retirement plans.1 Recent changes in law have resulted in plans implementing a variety of required and optional changes that have arisen under various legislation such as the SECURE Act, CARES Act, and SECURE. 2.0 Act. In order to ensure your plan remains legally compliant, it will be important to review your plan operations and make sure any changes are documented in writing before the end of the year.
These Acts date back several years, meaning that many plans will have operationally implemented many of these changes already. The 2026 year-end deadline is to document these changes in writing as part of a formal plan amendment.
If you have any concerns about when a feature could or should have been operationally implemented or amended into your plan document, please reach out to your ERISA counsel.
The following is a brief summary of several high-profile features of recent legislation that may be incorporated into the year-end amendment process:
- Mandatory Roth treatment of catch-up contributions for certain high-earning employees.
- Plan eligibility for long-term part-time employees.
- “Super” catch-up contributions for individuals ages 60–63.
- Increases in ages that trigger required minimum distributions.
- Certain optional distribution features, including distributions for qualified births and adoptions, distribution of funds in connection with federally declared disasters, distributions for victims of domestic violence, and distributions to terminally ill individuals.
- Student loan matching programs, if implemented.
- Increased threshold for mandatory plan distributions.
- Distributions and loan enhancements that may have occurred in 2020 in connection with COVID-19.
This list is not exhaustive and there are many optional features under SECURE 2.0 alone that could require additional amendments. If you are unsure whether your plan has adopted these features or when they became effective, it might be helpful to reach out to your plan advisor or legal counsel.
The IRS initially indicated December 31, 2026 would be the amendment deadline for all CARES, SECURE, and SECURE 2.0 changes (see Notice 2024-2). However, on September 16, 2026, the IRS released additional informal guidance suggesting that the amendment deadline for certain SECURE 2.0 provisions (such as mandatory Roth catch-up contributions) may be extended later than originally announced. Regardless, because December 31, 2026 remains a deadline for several provisions, we recommend plan sponsors consider including all implemented aspects of recent legislation as part of the year-end process if it is reasonable.
Considerations for pre-approved plans
The 2026 year-end amendment deadline also applies to preapproved plans. However, in many cases the vendor maintaining the preapproved plan (typically the plan’s recordkeeper) may have already amended the document. If you use a preapproved plan, it will be important to discuss the year-end deadline with your vendor—the vendor may have already made the required amendments to your plan, or they may have implemented the required amendments but left it to the plan sponsor’s discretion to implement any amendments for optional features. In particular, it will be important to discuss the effective date of any features added and ensure they are properly documented. If any additional amendments need to be implemented, plan sponsors will want to notify their document provider as soon as possible to avoid any unforeseen delays at the end of the year.
Considerations for individually designed plans
Sponsors of individually designed plans will want to reach out to the plan’s legal advisor and the plan’s recordkeeper to ensure all implemented features are properly documented. Consider discussing with the recordkeeper the timing of any implementation and ensure the amendment accurately reflects this timing.
Roth mandatory catch-up contributions for certain employees
SECURE 2.0 requires that any catch-up contributions from employees who earned more than a certain income in the prior calendar year ($150,000 in 2025 for 2026) on a FICA basis be made as a Roth contribution. The IRS released Notice 2023-62 implementing an administrative transition period until 2026; however, no further relief was provided in the final regulations issued on September 15, 2025, and plan sponsors will need to comply with the mandatory Roth catch-up requirement for certain employees in the 2026 plan year. However, we note that the final regulations will generally become effective January 1, 2027. This means that plan sponsors will be required to comply under a good-faith standard until the final rules become effective. But plan sponsors are free to implement the features of final regulations early.
Discretionary amendments
December 31, 2026 is also the deadline for adopting most discretionary amendments that may have been implemented during the 2026 calendar year. If you made any changes to your plan this year, ensure you take the necessary steps to ensure the plan document is formally amended before the end of the year.
Other Action Items
As you review your plan document, you may consider whether amending or reviewing any of the following provisions under your retirement plan is appropriate, regardless of whether they are a required amendment:
- Does your plan address how forfeitures are used?
- Does your plan properly address claims procedures and litigation concerns (administrative exhaustion language, internal statute of limitations, internal venue selection, etc.)?
- Does your plan contain an arbitration provision?
- Are your plan’s beneficiary procedures up to date and consistent with how you administer the plan? In particular, do they adequately address what happens to existing beneficiary designations upon a participant’s divorce, and what happens when a beneficiary dies after the participant’s death but before receiving a distribution?
We observe that plan use of forfeiture accounts continues to be the subject of ongoing litigation through 2026. One way to address the risk of litigation may be to amend the plan to contain language specifying a default position (for example, that forfeitures will be used to reduce employer contributions) and specifying that the decision on how to use forfeitures shall be a settler decision rather than a fiduciary decision. The year-end may present an ideal opportunity to review the applicable plan terms and ensure they adequately address how forfeitures may be used under the plan and make sure the language reflects the plan sponsor’s intentions.
Conclusion
Many retirement plans will need to be amended in 2026 to remain compliant with applicable law. We recommend plan sponsors begin taking action now to ensure they have plenty of time to ensure amendments are drafted and executed by year-end. This required amendment process will also present an excellent opportunity for plan sponsors to review their qualified retirement plans and whether operational improvements are appropriate. Please do not hesitate to contact your Alston & Bird attorney to discuss any of the plan amendments or other action items.
Endnotes
- Note that while most plans will need to be amended by December 31, 2026, governmental and union plans may have different deadlines. According to IRS Notice 2024-2, the deadline for adopting SECURE 2.0 amendments for collectively bargained calendar-year plans is December 31, 2028, while the amendment deadline for governmental calendar-year plans is December 31, 2029. If you sponsor such a plan, discuss the deadline with your advisors.
If you have any questions, or would like additional information, please contact one of the attorneys on our Employee Benefits & Executive Compensation team.
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