ForksnKnives

The answer to your question is yes, as an alternate payee you are entitled to plan information like any other beneficiary of the plan. Whether the plan recognizes you as an alternate payee may be why you are not receiving information. After the court signs the domestic relations order it must be sent to plan administrator for review. If the plan administrator qualifies the order then the plan administrator recognizes you as an alternate payee and you should not have problems. If the order was not qualified then there is still work to be done to protect your rights under the plan. Contact the plan administrator or their service vendor to determine if they received the order and whether it was qualified. If it was not received or not qualified then you need to talk to your attorney. If it was qualified then pursue further with them why you are not receiving information or responses. It is possible they have a bad address for you and the info is going somewhere else.

I can only imagine what sort of absurd scheme is behind this DRO. I can't see how it's qualified. Of all the potential problems that may disqualify the order, the most likely is that it effectively makes an unknown IRA--the account itself--an alternate payee. An account cannot be an alternate payee under ERISA and almost certainly under this state's law as well. If there is no alternate payee because the IRA is owned by the participant then the order cannot be qualified for that explicit reason. Whatever the bizarre goal here is only enforceable under state law.

I agree it can be done but the spousal beneficiary should make sure an actual rollover occurs into her participant account and the money is not left lying in a beneficiary account in her name.

Of all the plans I have seen I do not recall one that allows an individual who has not met eligibility requirements to take out a loan but I absolutely agree with the responses above that the plan document will address the answers to your specific situation.

A common use interpretation suggests his retirement date is his last date of service with the company, so 12/31/13. My mindset with the retiree is to ask whether the tax implications of acting as though 1/1/14 is the correct date is so significantly different from the tax implications of acting as though 12/31/13 is the correct date that it makes sense to pay the potential cost of fighting the IRS plus the risk of paying the greater taxation on money that will eventually be taxed. I find it hard to imagine that taking an RMD for 2013 is not the cheaper route for the retiree.

It's not too late to have a DRO drafted and ordered by the court.

Request a copy of the plan document from the plan administrator. Determine if the plan accepts DROs. Non-qualified benefits do not always accept DROs but if this option plan does then the plan document should provide you the details on what the order requires. There is a good probability that you will have to engage in some enforcement action against your ex-spouse to recover what you were initially ordered. Your best option here is to talk to a divorce attorney.

First of all, you should report this paralegal to your state's bar for unauthorized practice of law. Second, the most reasonable interpretation of that language is that the equal division of the accounts is the intended effect of the language and the identification of the approximate value is merely to describe the approximate value of what is divided. However, case law in your jurisdiction may support an interpretation that limits your ex-spouse to the $10,000 value to be divided. Your best option here is to talk to a divorce attorney in your area about your options.

I couldn't agree more. It's mostly just an upsell on the same services already provided. The real mess will be what happens when participants file suit. The sponsor is going to get sued anyway and end up pointing fingers at the service provider and see that same service provider point the finger back at the sponsor. There's a great probability that either both end up as co-fiduciaries, eroding the supposed benefit of paying for fiduciary services, or it turns out nobody was performing these fiduciary duties and new claims are exposed.

I thoroughly disagree that "this is fine". As masteff pointed out, the IRS already has enforced this rule at least once even if widespread enforcement isn't allegedly scheduled to begin until next year. The IRS's choice to allocate resources to enforcement doesn't mean the IRS cannot raise the issue with you in a future audit. It will not be a defense that the IRS said enforcement will begin next year. Generally it sounds like you are trying to outfox the IRS. That's a pretty bad idea. There are other options to obtain loans and as John points out, interest rates are very low. You might be able to obtain a loan secured by the IRA in which you are retaining your tax deferred investment returns and paying a very low rate on a loan.

Before you do anything you need to get a better sense of what your benefits presently are and what the QDRO on your benefits and the QDRO on her benefits (if any) provide you. Judging by what you have written it sounds like you are not entirely clear. If you offer your ex-spouse a new deal to switch around benefits you may find that you have given yourself a bad deal twice. You may not even be able to execute an effective agreement because the plan may have no choice but to follow the QDRO, which will make all of this for nothing. Whether you can obtain a new QDRO is something you should discuss with your new lawyer.

Sounds like either the drafting attorney is trying to pull a fast one on the other attorney or just doesn't know what he or she is doing. Either way, the other participant's attorney should oppose the proposed DRO and propose one that accurately divides the accounts based on the agreement.

Why would you want to absorb the administrative burden of keeping accounts under $1000 for up to an addition 20.5 years?

The dissent's reasoning is stretching, to say the least.

The court is definitely saying Pub. 590's example is wrong. The court's discussion of the statuory language on pages 12-13 explain why. If 408(d) said "an individual retirement account" and then later used language identifying the limitation to that same IRA then the statute would make the IRS interpretation correct, but that isn't what the statute says. Court wins, IRS loses. The IRS should have corrected its guidance twenty years ago.