teachers from artificially increasing their pensions by converting non credible earnings for example or paid life insurance into credible earnings such as  salary within a certain period of time with their retirement groups of seven years without a legitimate reason on the route the rules presumes that any such change within seven years does not have a legitimate reason insurance accordingly mr sart all who was caring family health insurance with his employer the possible school district no longer needed to carry out family health insurance and therefore proper family health insurance and he did receive this increase in salary this was a legitimate reason that if you get insurance cheaper from his wife who didn't get insurance for the first time when he was no longer new and he no longer needed it was an audit they didn't change his credible earnings they did reduce the amount that was paid to him and that they just told him that if you retired within seven years without producing additional evidence then then that would be then that example it shows that it doesn't those are just examples for example if the the group was unhappy and the employer passed a policy that affected everybody with respect  it's no different than this is the as the fear i submit is that when a person doesn't meet family health insurance anymore because of the pending just graduated college there's no difference between that and your spouse because this is the force of whatever our staff it's a change in the family relationship which occurred for example when a dependent child graduates college and no longer needs insurance this is just the wife who real question is was the pay for the increase was the reason for the increase in salary done for a legitimate reason not to artificially raise your final year salary and he because because he again the wife could get surance in the end by using pay for the raise the south if your salary goes out you automatically lose what what's your ss doing is creating a catch twenty two towards towards retirement the employer has to pay a penalty has to pay the actuarial costs of any case so there are way there's ways to see the whole staff but what but however just because they're strong retirement with respect to the second issue which was sort of dealt with the ready in part information they don't give a timeline for when you have you know they'll say you better get your information in you know the six months they say you have to do there's two conditions that they sort of put on the letter if that's the way it will be if you retire and that's will be if you but quite honestly to convert you know a decision by the court on the conversion issue would give us some good direction we also apparently agree as far as what the purpose of the conversion will lives and that's to prevent members from artificially inflated their pension benefits in the last several years of their of their church and we also believe that this is a case involving confer patient of the conversion really applies to something totally different from us the terms are not even identical there's a change in status i think it's the i rest term that has to do with elections under a cafeteria the term that we use is changing them lee status but the purpose of the of the i arrest interpretations of cafeteria rules and the purpose that we're following are totally  interpretation under the iraqi code and then apply it to in my case it was a risk that's a clear case which is cited so i i really think that that's very much of a red herring that's not the case the family status is an example of a situation where we believe that where we have interpreted that conversion will would not apply if it wouldn't pollute such things as it wasn't a fit change in family status what happened was mr suttles wife got a new job that's not a change in family status and in the the reason why these things are different is that changing them we status situation here where he was still eligible to receive those most health insurance benefits through his employer he was basically shopping to be able to get a different kind of deal where he could inflate is of a red herring mr sutton well i had a three year contract with over forty seven the contract provided that the board would a family health insurance that cost about twelve thousand nine hundred dollars at that time  he renegotiated the contract the following year for a two year contract although the contract still makes set has that same position everybody agrees that the order didn't actually do that they increased  there was a very very tiny there was a very very tiny savings to the board that was clearly not the purpose of what happened was it wasn't do that we didn't have any control over that transaction i only thing we have troll over is whether or not we allow the actors be considered to be salary for purposes of puting your your retirement so that's that was totally that was totally ok between he and the board of education it's not ok between the member and ras when we're computing his retirement it has to be for a legitimate reason that's not the language of the conversion the conversion rule creates a presumption that if you decrease the amount of not report provided by our by our regulations and one of those reasons may not be to increase average salary so that's something that the number has to prove by clear and convincing evidence that overcome insurance premium for my wife's insurance in the form of salary so that i can pay for the coverage myself feverishly my wife's new employer allowed the board to continue to provide health insurance premium to me only in an indirect manner and at a substantial say so he admits there that what they did was they stopped providing his health insurance they gave him salary so he didn't use that salary to pay for the health insurance education that expanded my job duties and release the board from paying for my insurance in exchange for a raise in salary so he admits clearly although i don't know how you could deny it that say they stopped providing and not reportable benefit they gave him a salary increase that he then used to pay for health insurance in another way and that's exactly what the conversion rule is designed  benefit and converted that into south in the artificial inflation of his pension came because they increased his salary or his attempted increase salary by twelve thousand four hundred dollars a year and that that would have had the effect of increasing his retirement of that it's above what we feel these are idle if that was allowed to be considered the salary for purposes of computation that's where the artificial inflation of his retirement benefits comes in but you've identified clearly why that is the case if you stop providing non reportable benefit you increase th that if you retired prior to the two thousand and eleven two thousand and twelve school year which is seven your window that this would be considered to be a conversion and that is is understood that the that he had the right to any us also admitted that he intentionally decided not to appeal at that time because he didn't at that time believe that he was going to retire with three so this is not a situation where he didn't receive the notice he didn't understand his rights he didn't know the impact of not appealing he just decided not to go  don't have a situation where somebody was deceived or fooled or didn't understand or didn't get notification he just made the determination not to do so at this time and he waited two and a half years before but i feel that is an alternative basis that language was in there the reality is that we have hundreds of step dispositions made all the time by people who are not lawyers and this was one of those and difference the only difference is how this thing came up they were did a routine audit of the of the district which they do periodically they review the contract they found this they advised mr sart well of their findings  the t r s have any power to discipline districts when they do things like this no no there was nothing wrong with what the district did they had a right to do this it's just that it's not credible earnings for purposes of t r s so there's no there's no reason for us to discipline the discipline the district but that doesn't mean that it's credible or earnings or salary as defined by a rules and regulations and in this case it's not it runs afoul of the conversion tool which is that in the purpose which is not being challenged in this case once again we come back to something that i said earlier one of the points of agreement between myself and opposing counsel is we're not there's not a challenge to get thorgerd of your estimate for this rule there's not any challenge to the authority of t r s to promulgate a rule which does not allow fringe because in this case without question he received a notice he understood the significance of it and he decided on his own not so i think that those are the clear distinction hundreds of letters in different forms and no one knows what those  and yet if i were representing a maybe i would have known the piece keep these members write letters on their own this didn't come from i think it's i think it's it's totally unfair and that's what the process of block is about if they don't know you can't make the under she got single and then they eventually got a family he could have kept as his single pass and he would have been ok but it was cheaper to do than some looking for alternative to save some money but i think i think he said how's everything because the sight of the savings and there was a say there was it was it was at least five hundred dollars over last year he forgot there was no raise in salary for the next this was fact and with respect to whether it's a change in status i think under the rules i think you need to fall off of that reason as well as have a legitimate reason which he had which is very similar to you say this this is part of it this is an example like it but a thousand follow it's exactly like he tries to make decisions between well under change in family status you don't have control what you do we change jobs you have the right to negotiate the benefits you have is not credible but it comes in the form of cafeteria play where the employer likes insurance which is all covered by the direct i rest regulation then that is credible but they have to follow the i r s rules and they allow employees to make changes incredible earnings you know to do to go to dollar expander your mouth that you should be to a cafeteria plan if you have a change