Timothy Sumer

Tutorial video in a series of DIY divorce videos that explains how to draft a QDRO to slit a 401(k) or pension during a divorce. A QDRO is a special type of court order that is essentially a set of instructions telling a retirement plan administrator how to divide a particular retirement asset such as a 401(k) or a pension. One option is to hire an expert to draft the QDRO. The experts that are in the business of drafting QDROs are typically accountants or actuaries, although some are lawyers. You can Google “QDRO drafting” and find an expert to draft a QDRO for you. You can expect to pay somewhere in the neighborhood of $500 to $600 per QDRO. Another approach is to draft your own QDRO using a model and instructions provided by the retirement plan administrator or custodian. Not all retirement plan administrators provide model QDROs and instructions, but many of them do. Call the administrator for each of your retirement plans and ask if they can mail or email

Tutorial video in a series of DIY divorce videos explaining how to join a retirement plan to a divorce case using FL-372 and other court forms. “Joinder” means to make the retirement plan a party to your divorce case. Some retirement plan require you to join them to the divorce case before they will honor a QDRO or Qualified Domestic Relations Order. Usually, you do not have to worry about joinder. However, most retirement plans that are associated with a California public entity, for example, a retirement that was earned by working for a city, a county, the State of California or some other public entity in California, will not honor a QDRO unless the public entity has been made a party to the divorce action. This means you have to “join” the retirement plan to your divorce case. You accomplish the joinder by completing three Judicial Council forms, filing those forms with the court clerk, and then mailing filed-endorsed copies of the forms, together with a blank

Third tutorial video in series on to divide retirement assets during a divorce using a QDRO (Qualified Domestic Relations Order). This video discusses what happens after you have filed your QDRO with the court and it has been approved by the retirement plan administrator, as well as a variety of other issues related to the division of retirement assets. If you have a defined contribution asset such as a 401(k) account, the administrator will send documents to the non-employee spouse asking that spouse how they want their share of the account handled. The spouse will be given at least a couple of options. One option may be to have their share remain in a separate account with the administrator. Another option may be to have their share paid out to another retirement account custodian, such as the custodian of an IRA. Your spouse can open an IRA account with a bank and have their share of your 401(k) rolled into the IRA account. This is what most people do. A th