As you head toward divorce, you may find yourself concerned about your retirement options. After all, you may have been saving up for retirement with your spouse. The two of you were planning on retiring together, and you are using joint funds to do so.
But what if those funds are connected to your spouse’s employment? For instance, maybe they have a pension plan that would support both of you easily for the rest of your lives. You never worried about saving for retirement because you knew you could just live off of your spouse’s pension. If you get divorced and you lose access to that pension, does this mean that you can’t actually retire?
Splitting up future benefits
You can still retire, and the key is simply to ensure you get the assets that you deserve during the divorce. Even though your spouse is the one earning the pension, you may have a right to the portion of that pension that they earned during your marriage. It still counts as a marital asset, even though your spouse has not yet retired and so they are not receiving monthly benefits at the moment.
What you will need to do, in most cases, is use a qualified domestic relations order. This could specify that a third of the pension plan should go to you and two-thirds should go to your ex-spouse, for example, depending on the length of your marriage and other factors. Once this court order has been handed down, you know that your financial future is a little more secure.
It’s important to understand how to preserve assets during divorce, so carefully consider all of your legal options.