<prompt> Human: Hello. My fiancee and I live in New York. She recently made a withdrawal from a 401k under a former employer to cover some bills coming into our wedding. It has been several months and she still has not received her money. She was working for a non-profit organization and the 401k was handled by a third party, but apparently there was some sort of proxy in place that prevented her from directly withdrawing the funds from the 401k; instead the company had to do it for her. Already this seemed bizarre to me. Since then she has been told that they just changed 401k providers, and because of this transition that the funds would be unavailable. Every time she calls to ask about this she receives a different story about when the funds might be available. Since this is her money and she is being prevented from actually receiving it, are any laws being broken? Can any action be taken to compel the company or the 401k handler or anyone involved to just release her money already? I feel like a situation where a former employer andor a financier are preventing a client from retrieving their own money - even if through nonmalicious negligence - must be violating a law of some kind.Can anyone provide some insight?  <response>: Ignoring the fact that it is likely not a smart financial decision to take money from your 401k to pay for a wedding, it certainly sounds like the company has been negligent in processing your wifes requested distribution. I would recommend filing a complaint with the EBSA against your wifes former employer to get some institutional pressure on the company to provide their stated benefits or face penalties: 