QDRO not entered before Alternate Payee's death...what do you do?

[Guest MikeD]

I have a situation where a divorce decree was entered granting the former spouse an interest in 1/2 of the participant's account balance. Before the QDRO was completed and entered, the alternate payee died. Does anyone have any idea what to do in this situation. It appears that some courts would hold that the divorce decree created her right in the Plan and some courts would say that the QDRO had to be in place. Assuming the judge will sign a QDRO now, can the Plan pay the 1/2 benefit to the Alternate Payee's estate?

[Alf]

Does the plan adminsitrator have notice of all of this? You have a really tough call if the admin. has notice that a QDRO is in the works, even if the alternate payee dies. I don't know of any reason why a posthumous DRO couldn't be a QDRO. Even though it probably depends on state law, administrators aren't charged with determining the validity of state court orders.

You should try the distributions message board too.