Sara Franco focuses her practice on helping employers, plan sponsors, fiduciaries, and plan administrators navigate employee benefits plan matters and understand their obligations under ERISA and the Internal Revenue Code. Drawing on her experience as in-house union benefits counsel and as a plan fiduciary, she helps clients identify potential compliance issues and make informed decisions that protect their plans and the people who rely on them. Her experience spans qualified retirement plans (both defined benefit and defined contribution); multiemployer and Taft-Hartley plans; health and welfare plans; VEBAs and retiree medical funding; fiduciary governance; PBGC administrative matters; plan mergers, freezes, and terminations; and benefits issues arising from corporate transactions and successor liability.

Clients turn to Sara for technically rigorous analysis and straightforward advice. Her approach starts with the operative plan documents; before answering a benefits question, she reviews the plan document, trust agreement, summary plan description, amendments, and, when relevant, collective bargaining agreements to understand what the plan actually requires. She then considers the applicable ERISA and Internal Revenue Code requirements alongside how the plan has been administered. This process allows her to identify ambiguities, uncover compliance issues, and give clients a clear answer, the reasoning behind it, and a practical path forward.

Having served as a plan fiduciary herself, Sara understands that legal advice must be useful to the people responsible for making decisions. She served as a trustee on two VEBAs, including as committee chair, advised a jointly trusteed retiree healthcare trust, and served as a union-appointed associate trustee on a national multiemployer pension plan during its critical status rehabilitation period. That firsthand perspective shapes how she counsels clients.

Before joining Tucker Arensberg, Sara served as the sole in-house benefits counsel for an international labor union representing approximately 1.2 million workers and retirees. Her work included advising on complex pension and health and welfare plan matters, negotiating pension and welfare benefit provisions of collective bargaining agreements, handling PBGC administrative appeals, and helping implement and oversee VEBAs. She also translated major developments in federal benefits law into practical guidance and training for the organization’s staff and other non-legal audiences.

Sara earned her J.D. from the Thomas R. Kline School of Law of Duquesne University and her B.A. in English Literature, cum laude, from Seton Hill University. She is admitted to practice in Pennsylvania and the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania.

Sara has also served her community through pro bono and civic work, including the Greater Pittsburgh Chapter of the ACLU of Pennsylvania and the West Deer Township Parks and Recreation Committee. She is also involved with The Children’s Institute of Pittsburgh, where she has served as a speaker and parent advocate.

Outside of her legal practice, Sara enjoys camping, reading, attending live music events, and traveling with her wife and three children.

• Notary Public, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 2024-present