Most people who go through a divorce don’t realize that they are entitled to a certain portion of their spouse’s retirement, pension or 401k. Others know they are entitled to a share, but choose not ask for it. The document needed to split a retirement, pension or 401k is called a Qualified Domestic Relations Order, or QDRO for short. When you make the decision to go forward with doing the documents to insure that you receive your share of your spouse’s retirement, pension or 401k, finding just the right person to do the documents for you can be a challenge. It is so important that the QDRO be typed correctly. If the QDRO isn’t typed correctly, it can affect the amount you receive, how you receive it, when you receive it and many other factors. Processing a QDRO is a long process that can become longer if the Plan doesn’t pre-approve the QDRO the first time. Usually the reason a Plan doesn’t approve the draft is either the person typing the QDRO (or retirement split)  didn’t request a sample from the Plan, which is VERY important, or they didn’t pay attention to the QDRO sample that the Plan provides, and made errors. It is also important to make sure that you still have a retirement account with that Plan! I know this sounds strange, but I have a customer who contracted with me to do his QDRO. The customer’s responsibility is to bring me all of the necessary information, such as final divorce documents (showing that the ex spouse was awarded a share of the pension) and the name/phone number and email address of the person at the Plan where the pension is held and the draft of the QDRO is to be sent for pre-approval. My customer did all of those things and even called the Plan and requested that they send me their sample of the QDRO they prefer to be used when splitting their pension plans. What he failed to do was to check and make sure he still had an account! I did my part by typing the QDRO to split his pension and sending the draft of the QDRO to the Plan for pre-approval. Today I received a letter back from the Plan, stating that my client received a “total distribution” from the Plan in 2008! This brings up a whole other issue that now has to be dealt with. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.