Depending on your age when you’re getting divorced, your retirement options may be at the forefront of your mind. For instance, the rate of divorce for those who are 65 years old and older has tripled over the last few decades. Couples around this age are often planning to retire in the very near future.
But you may be concerned if your spouse was earning retirement benefits or a pension plan, and you planned to use them to retire jointly. Now that the two of you have decided to get divorced, do you have any right to those benefits, or are you just out of retirement options? After all, it may be too late to begin saving on your own since you anticipated having those benefits at your disposal.
A qualified domestic relations order
You can split up the retirement benefits in many cases, and you do it with a qualified domestic relations order. This can be put in place before your spouse retires. After they do, they have to give you the percentage of the plan allotted to you in the QDRO.
This percentage will be different for everyone. One of the main factors is the length of the marriage. The court will also consider when your spouse earned the pension. Generally, the percentage of the plan that was earned during your marriage will need to be split between the two of you. But your former spouse would get to keep 100% of the portion of the plan that was earned outside of the marriage, such as before the wedding or after the divorce.
It’s very important to know what steps to take to protect your financial future and what legal options you have during the divorce.
