Professional Experience

Sheldon Mike Young is Of-Counsel to Walter & Haverfield, and part of its Employee Benefits Group.

Mike has been an employee benefits specialist since 1952, and he has a nationwide practice that includes all aspects of employee benefit plans, including retirement plans (both qualified and non-qualified). This includes plan design, administration, funding methods, qualification of retirement plans, prohibited transactions and fiduciary liability issues, plan asset reversions, 401(k) plans, age-weighted plans, ESOPs, multi-employer plans, and plan issues in mergers, acquisitions and divestitures. Mr. Young has practiced before the National Office and regional offices of the Internal Revenue Service, the National Office and district offices of the Department of Labor and before the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. He was also a Treasury Department Appointee to the ad hoc Committee on Tax Reform Act of 1986 compliance. In July, 2000, he was inducted into the American College of Employee Benefits Counsel as a Charter Fellow and is listed in the 2002 and 2004 editions of Best Lawyers in America. He has twice been honored as being one of Ohio's Superlawyers.

Mr. Young is a member of the Ohio and American Bar Associations. He is also a member of the Employee Benefits Committee of the Section of Taxation of the American Bar Association where he chairs the subcommittee on Obsolete Rulings. Three of his reports on this subject have been published by the Association. He is also a member of the Labor Committee and the Senior Lawyers' Division, the latter of which has published his article on "Saving Social Security?" and an article of his experience as a young sailor celebrating VJ-Day in New York.

Mr. Young is the author of the seven-volume Treatise, "Pension and Profit Sharing Plans", first published in 1977 by Matthew Bender & Co. (this Treatise ceased being revised in 1993). This Treatise has been cited favorably by the Courts and by the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans. He has authored a number of articles on the preservation of Social Security for the Columbus Dispatch, Experience (the magazine for the Senior Lawyers Division of the ABA) and the Ohio Lawyer. In 2001, he was honored as a 50-year member of the Ohio Bar.

Aside from technical writing, Mike is the author of the novel Toledoth - City of Generations, published in July, 2003. The novel is set in mid-fourteenth century Spain when a civil war for the crown raged and the Black Death swept the country, leading to a massacre of the Jewish quarter of Toledo. The culture of the Spanish communities is revealed in a story that deals with the way that private problems were faced in this atmosphere. He has written a number of op-ed pieces for the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Columbus Dispatch.

Mike has also been very active in teaching and lecturing. He has taught as an instructor in the graduate law program at Case Western Reserve University Law School, Cleveland, Ohio. In addition, he taught a seminar course in Pension and Profit-Sharing Problems at the Akron University Law School, Akron, Ohio and was an Adjunct Professor in the Master of Tax Program at Akron. He has also lectured at a variety of seminars, including the Cleveland Tax Institute, various Columbus Bar Association seminars, ALI-ABA in Washington, D.C. and Scottsdale, Arizona, Fordham Law School, Ohio State University, and at a number of Estate Planning councils (Cleveland, Akron, Toledo, Ohio; Lexington, Kentucky and Seattle, Washington).

He served as a hospital corpsman (USN) during World War II. Mr. Young and his wife, the author Bette Roth Young, reside in Westerville, Ohio. Mike can be contacted directly at: Phone: 614-898-1096, Fax: 614-898-7190, E-mail: yomike@asacomp.com.

Awards & Recognition

• AV rated by Martindale-Hubbell
  
  
• Selected for inclusion in the 2006 through 2008 editions of The Best Lawyers in America. Employee Benefits Law
  
  
• 2004 - 2006: Law & Politics Ohio Super Lawyer. Employee Benefits
  
  
• 2001 - Honored as a 50 year member of the Ohio bar Association