Legal Question in Family Law in California

Your wife portion is set upon the date of your entry into the plan and the date of separation. The court will issue a QDRO order - Qualified domestic relations order- which orders the IRA be split. In the Order you will list down the dates and they do the rest. Not a clear cut answer but basically, when you start your retirement, she will get 28% of the value as of the date of separation.

The issue that I see that is not addressed by your post is whether any of the IRA was contributed to during the marriage. In other words, you leave open the issue of whether you contributed to an IRA for 10, before you were married, and then were married for 4 years with no contributions.