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First, an overview observation, and then an attempt to give a helpful answer. As someone that you might refer to as a QDRO lawyer, I see a lot of information and query that I think is very unlikely to matter in terms of determining whether or not the domestic relations order is a QDRO, including different vintages of plan document. A 401(k) account is a relatively easy thing to divide from a qualification perspective, assuming conventional liquid assets. Plan terms usually have no substantial effect. Because of the excess of text that appears to be irrelevant, it seems that there is a lot of confusion. The confusion also appears involve identification of the relevant “fiduciary” or fiduciaries who will be responsible for cutting through all of the noise and making decisions about the domestic relations order as qualified or not. The usual circumstances relating to a QDRO involve two pieces: (1) what part of the 401(k) account will the alternate payee get? This has everything to do with the divorce settlement and not necessarily anything to do with the terms of the 401(k) plan (except maybe vesting). The plan is totally agnostic about what the alternate payee should receive, except that the alternate payee cannot receive an amount or type of benefit that the plan does not provide for (which is a qualification matter and almost never an issue with a 401(k) plan). For determining the amount that the alternate payee should receive in the greater scheme of things, the parties need domestic relations lawyers to come up with a domestic relations order that I will refer to as the “divorce decree” which may or may not be the domestic relations order that is submitted to the plan to end up with a QDRO (probably not; see the explanation below about the role of the QDRO lawyer). (2) A domestic relations order (DRO) must be submitted to the plan in order to tell the plan what the divorce decree specifies to be the interest in the plan awarded to the alternate payee. The DRO must set forth the information that the relevant statutes require, which neatly corresponds to the information that the plan administrator (or other QDRO fiduciary) actually needs to administer the DRO and give the alternate payee what the divorce decree has determined that the alternate payee should get. Unfortunately, a QDRO lawyer (or other competent professional) may be required to make sure that the formal qualification requirements are satisfied. A QDRO lawyer will be concerned with plan terms, but, as mentioned before, plan terms usually have little effect. An experienced QDRO lawyer can probably put together a perfectly good domestic relations order while being almost blind to plan terms — not that they actually would. A QDRO lawyer is indifferent to the settlement terms that relate to what the alternate payee “should” receive from a 401(k) plan as long as the “what” is expressed in the divorce decree as a dollar amount or a percentage of the account balance as of a particular date. Valuation dates may be a matter affected by plan terms, which gets us to: (3) A common arrangement is for the domestic relations lawyer to have an association of sorts with a QDRO lawyer (or other professional) to make sure that the divorce decree defines the alternate payee’s interest in the plan in a way that can be implemented by the plan, such as by specifying a valuation date that is workable for the plan. The QDRO lawyer then drafts a domestic relations order that meet the qualification requirements to become a QDRO. So, the answer to your question is: both, especially since there seems to be so much confusion about what matters or not, and people seem to be enmeshed in a probably unnecessary push/pull. I am not unmindful of the misfortune that something that is conceptually quite simple ends up needing the assistance of expensive professionals to make things “right” whether or not anyone is made happy. Important addendum: No mention has been made of an extremely important document that plans are required to have: written procedures on qualified domestic relations orders (QDRO Procedures). If I were to have only one document from the plan, that is the one that I would request. However, while that document should be the most important and informative of all plan documents, that document often sucks and will disappoint. The QDRO Procedures may be incorporated into an SPD.

I agree with C.B. Zeller. Is the issue the file type? Because ASC takes .txt files for import just fine. Is the issue how the data is in the file? What import function in ASC are you trying to use? there are a variety of ways to import things into ASC. For example, investment imports where ASC has pre-programmed to work with certain major recordkeeper files. And then there are ASCRIPT custom imports which are super easy to use as well once you know what you are doing. Plus wizards and such. If the issue is how the data is in the file, and you don't want to manually edit the file then a macro or code to do that as CB suggests. You can just open the txt file in Excel, and then save it as an excel file type if you really just want to change the file type.

ASC can natively import txt files. Is the file structured in any reasonable way? Have you tried using one of ASC's import wizards or their predefined importer specs, if one exists for the data source you're using? If you want to take the approach of using code to extract/transform data before loading it into ASC, then a chatbot could probably help you write the code. I'd recommend that you know enough Python (or whatever language) to be able to read and understand the bot's output before relying on it in production. People on the internet seem to like Claude for that kind of task these days, but I can't offer any personal experience.