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Qualified Domestic Relations Order (QDROs)
QDRO stands for Qualified Domestic Relations Order. It is a
judgment or order that is made approved by the Maryland Circuit Court, usually to divide or assign assets that are in a pension plan
under the terms of a Marital Separation Agreement. If your Marital
Separation Agreement requires the payment of assets from a pension
plan, then you need to have a QDRO that
authorizes the pension plan administrator to pay assets to what is known as
an "alternate payee." The QDRO assigns to an alternate
payee a right to receive benefits under the plan. The QDRO must meet
certain statutory requirements.
Not every pension and/or 401(k) plan requires a QDRO. You must
contact you or your spouse's human resource department or retirement
plan administrator to determine if you need one. If so, the draft
QDRO must first be approved by the Plan Administrator before it can be
submitted to the Court for approval. This process may proceed quickly
or may be delayed for several months depending on the company. After
the QDRO is approved, you and your spouse will need to
sign it and you will be responsible for submitting it to the Court for
the Judge's signature, which is normally routine. The order is then
sent to the retirement plan administrator for implementation.
At this time we are not preparing Orders for "defined benefit"
plans which require a valuation.
Typical "defined benefit" pension plans include:
• Final Average Pay Plan
• Career Average Plan
• Hourly-Rate Pension Plan
• Cash Balance Plan
• Money Purchase Pension Plan
There are many varieties of “defined contribution”
plans, including:
• 401(k) Plans, 403(b) Plans
and 457(b) Plans
• Profit-Sharing Plan
• Retirement Savings Plan
• Thrift Plan
• Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP)
• Savings Investment Plan (SIP)
We can prepare your QDRO, which will include gathering the information
and acquiring approval from the Company. You would be responsible for
filing the Order with the Court and submitting the court approved
Order to the company for implementation.
Child Support QDRO
Throughout the U.S. today, there are
millions of ex-spouses who have refused to honor their child support
or alimony obligations. QDROs are a very efficient way to secure
past-due child support and alimony. Most employers, large and small,
offer some form of pension or savings plan for their employees. If you
think your ex-spouse may participates in a pension or 401(k) savings
plan, you can take immediate advantage of the federal QDRO laws and in
many cases, your can get their past-due child support or alimony
immediately in a single lump sum payment
QDROs are Complex
It can take time to prepare a QDRO as it is dependent on how
fast your company will cooperate and provide us with the necessary
documentation. Our standard fee for a QDRO is $500.00. This is a
relatively expensive document to prepare because of the required
custom drafting and the amount of time it takes to work with your
company's Plan Administrator.
You will find that an attorney will charge any where from $750.00 to
$1,500.00 to do this kind of work, if not more.
If you need a QDRO, you will find a Questionnaire within
your ClientSpace™ that you can
purchase that will provide us with the necessary information to start
the process. To proceed, your first step is to
register for this site and be accepted as a client of our law
firm.
All of our QDROs are guaranteed through
approval.
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