Month: February 2010
Retirement and Divorce: Additional Resources
We hope you’ve found our series of blog entries on divorce and retirement assets to be informative. In today’s final blog entry we have listed several additional resources that provide additional information on divorce and retirement assets. ▪ The U.S. Department of Labor has published a helpful booklet about Qualified Domestic Relations Orders called The Division of Retirement […]
Don’t take a pension for granted
Often divorcing couples will opt to divide their marital property by giving one spouse the home and the other spouse the pension. This easy way of dividing marital property may leave one spouse at a disadvantage that isn’t recognized until retirement. While a house may have emotional value, it may not have the same monetary […]
Don’t delay: Submit court orders to the plan right away!
In order to receive retirement benefits that have been awarded in a divorce, it is important to obtain a court order, which tells retirement plans how to divide and pay benefits to the divorced couple. For private retirement plans, these court orders are called Qualified Domestic Relations Orders or QDROs. Other retirement systems call them Domestic Relations Orders or […]
A pension earned during a marriage is usually the property of both spouses
Did you know that, in general, retirement assets earned during a marriage are marital property in the same way that a house and a savings account are? This applies to: ▪ pension benefits earned during a marriage; ▪ retirement savings accounts that were funded during a marriage; and ▪ the earnings on these accounts that accumulated during the marriage. Please […]
Getting divorced? Don’t forget the pension!
What better time than the week after Valentine’s Day to devote a week’s worth of blog entries to divorce? This is the first in a series of blog entries focusing on issues involving divorce and retirement. Enjoy! Did you know that, aside from real estate, retirement plans are usually the largest asset in a marriage? Yet, […]