Have you and your spouse been planning to retire together? For example, perhaps your spouse is earning significant retirement benefits from their employer. Rather than saving up for your own retirement, you have simply been planning to use those benefits when the two of you decide to retire at the same time.
But that has gotten complicated because you and your spouse have decided to get a divorce. Will this mean that you lose all access to those retirement benefits, or can they be split up during property division? How do you protect your financial future?
You can use a QDRO
Often, you can split up retirement benefits using a Qualified Domestic Relations Order (QDRO).
Naturally, your spouse is not receiving payments yet – since they are still working – but will be in the future. So the court will simply determine what percentage of those payments should go to you. The QDRO makes this official so that your spouse has to send you that percentage once they do retire and start receiving the benefits.
As a general rule, the length of your marriage will be an important part of this calculation. You typically can only claim a percentage of the benefits that were earned during your marriage. So if your spouse continues to earn them after the divorce or earned some of the benefits before the two of you got married, you may receive less than 50% of the total retirement benefit.
Every case is unique, and it may help to meet with experienced lawyers who can help you explore all of your legal options and your rights at this important time.