LookingFORhelp

Update: The Grumman Pension was separated as per the QDRO! There was a hold-up because of co-ordination and communication issues between the previous plan administrator State Street and the current Fidelity. This site is an amazing resource. Thank you for your sharing of your time & expertise.

UPDATE: Grumman DRO Case Summary: 2010 DRO signed by the courts, return receipt from Employer that they received it. No Qualification Letter, no denial of DRO either. 2021 inquiry to PA results in discovery that benefits were never separated (more details in 1st post). Attempted over the last 3mths to contact my original attorney. The last message from last week: "Don't call me, again"... I have retained a new attorney, faxed him all my paperwork. He feels confident that I should be able to get my QDRO and has given me the same advice as on here. But feels it would be a waste of my money to get involved until there is a 'determination'. I have contacted Northrup née Grumman. They were very polite and so sorry that I am going through all this. The pension pre-dates their acquisition of Grumman, so they said it will take time to find all the paperwork. Subsequent phone calls: They are looking into it. I talked to Fidelity on a regular basis. They have been very polite and so sorry that I am going through all this. They assure me that they 'working' on it. My case has been forwarded for QDRO calculation and if there are no obstacles, they 'expect' that my "QDRO Calculation Kit" will be in the mail in the next week. That and a nickel does not give me a warm & fuzzy as they said that last week. The Fidelity people I talk to can only read the electronic notes that are attached to my case file. The notes have not been updated in over 3 weeks. There doesn't seem to be anyone that can tell me what actual steps they have taken so far, if any. So this update is just to say that there is no update. Everyone is ever so gracious and polite and saying all the right things while still telling me nothing. Fidelity asks that I only call once per week because they won't have any information any sooner. So I will continue to squeak weekly. I am assuming that I will get a "QDRO Calculation Kit" or they will have to, eventually, tell me that I am not going to get what I was awarded. Thank you for all the replies. fmsinc, thanks for all your info. All the paperwork between the courts and lawyers was directly with the Grumman Pension Center in New Jersey so I assumed no PA existed. But it can't hurt to reach out to Aon Hewitt and Alight to see if they have any information. This forum is a great resource. If anything changes, I will come back w/ an update.

DRO submitted to Grumman April 2009. May 2009, DRO almost accepted by Grumman . The rejection letter states: Upon review, it has been determined that the order against the Pension Plan would meet the requirements of a Qualified Domestic Relations Order once the following modification has been made: Section 1 (c)- The correct name of the Plan is Northrop Grumman Pension Plan. Please make the modification accordingly. January 2010, a DRO with the corrected pension plan name was signed by the courts, filed, and sent certified to the PA. No further correspondence exists. The DRO was separate interest; awarding the benefits to the AP as my sole and separate property. The current PA, Fidelity took over administration of the Grumman Pension in 2017 and has no record of any paperwork of any kind relating to divorce, DRO, QDRO. The closest that they were able to find was a PDF attachment to the benefits called QDRO but when they click on it, they get file not found. They have informed me the benefits were never separated. Fidelity has been given all the documents that I had. I don't think that I have filed a formal claim. I have a Fidelity-Issued Reference Number dated 3mths ago the start of my 'inquiry" . Calls to Fidelity result in lots of conversations, everyone has been quite nice without ever giving me any information. They say there were delays due to not being able to reach the Participant to verify the information. Delays due to COVID and getting copies of the original documents filed with the county. delays with the issue being reviewed by employer/sponsor. Etc… Etc… Will they eventually have to tell me what is going to happen? Can this just drag out forever? Is there a formal process that I have to follow to get them to give me a determination? In 2007 as part of the bifurcated divorce action, the pension was listed in assets with a value of $1.2mil, so it wasn't a tiny account. I understand given that the plan was never separated, I have obstacles beyond the DRO qualification (IE: Fidelity says privacy laws won't let them tell me if the plan is now in 'pay' status which could create insurmountable problems for my 'separate interest') but no sense going into them if there is no QDRO. Bottom Line: Like many other people that have posted here, I am hoping that my case is unique and that my DRO is a QDRO even without the Qualification letter. Yeah, stupid, I know. All my plans for how to survive were based on those monies. Getting a lawyer and going to court are problematic. I am still a US citizen, I live abroad, severely disabled. There is no possibility of my getting back to the States. Just trying to get a read on a scale of 1 to 10, how screwed am I. Thank you for your consideration. This forum provides more clear and unambiguous information on QDROs than the whole rest of the internet combined.