Curious About How Retirement Accounts Get Divided Up In A Divorce?

Are you wondering how your retirement accounts are going to be divided during your divorce?

Hi, I’m Marie Drake at The Drake Law Firm, and today, I’m going to talk to you about what the courts do when you have retirement accounts accumulated during your marriage and now you’re facing divorce. When dividing a 401(k), for example, and let’s say just for simplicity’s sake, that the 401(k) is 100% marital and it’s worth $100,000. What the court will do is look at that $100,000 and not necessarily divide it 50-50 and 50,000 to one spouse 50,000 to another. The court will take into account say equity in the marital home and debts and other assets if there are other assets. So, everything will be aggregated and then divided fairly not necessarily equally. So remember that. And it’s not that complicated, but you do need what’s called a qualified domestic relations order to divide an IRA or a 401(k), and that’s a little bit of a process, but it’s not that complicated, and we can help you get it done.

If you do need a qualified domestic relations order to divide a 401(k) or an IRA, you’ll first need to hire someone who specializes in what are called QDROS. It usually costs about $700 to get everything done and that includes the QDROS specialist contacting your 401(k) company and finding out exactly what needs to happen in order to divide that pursuant to the court order. So, there is a little bit of a process but that doesn’t cost $10,000. It costs around $700, and couples need to just build that in if indeed, they are going to be dividing retirement accounts that include 401(k)s and IRAs.

So, if you have any questions about any of this, whether or not your retirement account is even marital property, give us a call we’re standing by and we’re happy to help.