The New England Pension Assistance Project is featured in this column, in which a reader asks for advice on getting information on his or her retirement plans.

When changing employers, individuals and their new retirement plan administrators have faced a time-consuming administrative process in proving the tax status of a plan rollover. And instead of dealing with the hurdles to validate a rollover, many individuals would transfer savings into individual retirement accounts or cash out the balance.

A New Jersey federal district court judge recently ruled that the pension plan of city-based Saint Peter’s University Hospital is not a "church plan" exempt from the protections of federal pension law.