"We have a participant who's been sending us letters for months, warning us that we might receive a QDRO but we should not honor it because it will be bogus (in this case it is a child support QDRO and he claims and has provided some documentation suggesting he is current on child support).
Today we received the QDRO. It is certified by a court and, under normal circumstances, we would approve and process it. Questions:
[1] Should we tell the participant we received the QDRO and give him time to respond? [2] Should we give the participant a copy of the QDRO (if not by default, should we if he asks for it)? [3] should we give him additional information, like the cover letter with the attorney's contact information (if not by default, should we if he asks for it)?
My preference is to honor the QDRO if it has been approved by the court, but
we've had at least one QDRO submitted in error in the past that was processed (i.e., the account divided and paid out to the AP) and it turned into a big mess. Our normal process is not to look outside the four corners of the QDRO document, but I want to avoid future headaches. EDIT: To add some context requested by some of the questions:
- 'We' refers to the delegate of the Administrator tasked with approving
QDROs.
- I refer to the Order as a QDRO, because we have already determined that it satisfies the criteria necessary to be approved as Qualified.
- Our process does call for notification of receipt of the Order, but not necessarily providing an actual copy of the Order, and definitely not for providing additional information, such as cover letters and attorney contact information.
The big questions revolve around
how much additional information we should provide to the participant upon request, and whether we should give any credence to non-QDRO related information (such as the participant's objection), and if we need to give the Participant time to respond before proceeding."