Death of alternate payee 10 years ago. no QDRO filed by AP - Fiduciary wants Participant to file for deceased AP

May I also ask, What type of attorney would handle this matter? 

As you have described the situation (I do not trust the description to be accurate or complete. Among other things, I assume that the “employer” is a private employer and not church related.), the core problem is that the plan suffers from a rectal cranial inversion. The plan has no business digging into the divorce. A death certificate would have sufficed to discharge its duty to question the change in spouse designation. It was a mistake to provide anything but the death certificate, but that mistake should not have led to the current situation. My earlier comment stands. The fiduciary is breaching its fiduciary duty by undue delay in processing the distribution. Unfortunately, the fiduciary is probably not amenable to informal education about the error of its ways, and will have to be forced to let go. That path is through the formal claims procedure to make the fiduciary face and explain its actions and position. An appeal of the initial decision may be necessary, and then possibly taking the matter to federal court. One of the good cards that the participant holds is that the federal court has the ability to award costs and attorneys fees against the fiduciary. Perhaps if that threat is brought up early enough, and it inspires the fiduciary to get its own good counsel, the process can be truncated.

Your question about a lawyer is timely. It would be well to have competent counsel start the written claim. That might cause the fiduciary to engage counsel that will then disabuse the fiduciary of its current position.

What kind of lawyer? One who knows what they are doing. One who has a focus on ERISA practice. That eliminates most lawyers who have a divorce practice.

7 hours ago, QDROphile said:

As you have described the situation (I do not trust the description to be accurate or complete. Among other things, I assume that the “employer” is a private employer and not church related.), the core problem is that the plan suffers from a rectal cranial inversion. The plan has no business digging into the divorce. A death certificate would have sufficed to discharge its duty to question the change in spouse designation.

What QDROphile said.  If any claim exists for the AP/estate, it would be external to the plan and possibly a liability of the participant - BUT, the plan has no obligation or authority to dig into this further.  No DRO means no DRO.

Nice succinct summary, Mojo.

The fiduciary is a huge multinational corporation.

The bank is probably not the fiduciary responsible for QDRO administration.

What is your role in all this?

Thank you. Current wife of participant.