Those of you who are divorced and were awarded a portion of your ex’s retirement, be sure
your Domestic Relations order or Qualified Domestic Relations order is in place.
As a divorce attorney practicing over 30 years, I can attest to a host of personal and legal
problems from clients, represented by other attorneys in their divorces, who either never filed or filed
their DRO or QDRO years after the divorce was filed. Some of the issues were:

  1. The ex-spouse retired and they never received their share
  2. The ex-spouse depleted an account or took out loans using the spouses share
  3. The plan changed administrators and it is no longer the same plan as is the divorce
  4. The language in the stipulation did not include what is necessary to secure the retirement
    benefit or to satisfy plan rules.
    The above are just a few of the legal disasters that you can encounter. There is another lesser
    known legal problem on the horizon – Medicaid will no longer honor maintenance awards when
    formulating Medicaid recipients’ budget.
    What does this have to do with DRO’s and QDRO’s? Well, if a person was in payout status and
    was paying a spouse their share rather than coming from the plan, pursuant to a DRO or QDRO,
    Medicaid can demand that those monies be used for the Medicaid recipient, who is the ex-spouse.
    If you do not have your ex-spouses pension secured with a QDRO or DRO, call the DePalo Law
    Firm today.