Legal Question in Family Law in Connecticut

A QDRO is NOT required to be signed by both parties.

It is beneficial to have the opposing party sign the QDRO.

Sometimes the opposing party will refuse to sign a QDRO after the divorce has been completed and his/her attorney is gone, so they do not have an attorney to talk sense into them. I have had a couple cases where the opposing party refused to participate in the divorce at all, so obviously the QDRO was not signed by the opposing party.

It is beneficial to learn about the basics of QDROs as a party/client so that you can discuss the issue intelligently with your divorce attorney early on.

Some Divorce attorneys may be willing to Draft a simple QDRO, Others may always refer clients to a QDRO attorney expert.

In the case of complicated QDROs I would always refer clients to an expert QDRO attorney. Unless your divorce attorney also happens to be a QDRO expert. Many divorce attorneys could do simple QDROs, but they choose not to as part of their business.

In the case of a simple QDROs the benefit of an expert, in cases where the administrator, has a template, is that the expert attorney can sometimes offer you more options than the template offers. Obviously, this will be more expensive than the template QDRO. The more complicated the QDRO, then the more expensive it will be.

Some experts advertise QDROs as cheap as $ 400 or $ 500 dollars but that is the lowest cost possible. Again, the more complicated the QDRO and the more time consuming, the more expensive.

A QDRO where there are multiple or numerous accounts can be much more complicated and expensive. Generally, Defined Benefit plan QDROs (eg: Pensions) are much more complicated an expensive than Defined Contribution Plan QDROs (eg: 401k's).

In my experience as a divorce attorney, in the case of an uncontested divorce, I prefer to discuss a QDRO as early on as possible and include in the Separation Agreement (Divorce Agreement) who will draft the QDRO and how it will be paid for. Although I prefer to have it ready for signing when we sign the Separation Agreement(Divorce Agreement).

Your divorce attorney or QDRO attorney expert can follow a pre-approval process to maximize the chances that the QDRO will be approved by the administrator and have it ready for signing along with the Separation Agreement (Divorce Agreement) in an uncontested divorce. In my experience this will increase the likelihood of the opposing party signing.

In an uncontested divorce, I prefer and recommend using the pre-approval process and having the QDRO ready for signing at the same time as the Separation Agreement (Divorce Agreement) is signed.

Many times, in an uncontested divorce, the QDRO is not even thought of until after the Divorce Judgment. This leads to procrastination. After a final divorce hearing, even an uncontested hearing, the last thing both parties want to deal with is the Court. Sometimes the opposing party does not want to sign and has no lawyer at that point to talk sense into them. More rarely in the case of procrastination and combined a poorly written QDRO, the financial situation may change to the detriment of the party entitled to the distribution. (Although the QDRO and the Separation Agreement should both have clauses protecting against this) Finally, many times a party may need access to the assets transferred by the QDRO as soon as possible

It is beneficial to have the opposing party sign because there will be a whole number of protective provisions in well written QDRO, that the opposing party will be agreeing to, therefore it gives you greater protection.

Your divorce attorney or QDRO expert attorney does have a process for freezing the assets necessary for your property distribution, so that the opposing party does not take out money that would affect your distribution. This is especially important in contentious cases.

In cases where it is a very amicable uncontested divorce and extremely unlikely that the opposing party would take money out that will affect your distribution, I would at least include a clause in the QDRO where the opposing party agrees that they will not take out money that would affect the property distribution..

It is also very important to find out if there are any loans and to address them in the QDRO so the assets transferred are all non loan assets.

I have spent a huge amount of time learning about QDROs and drafting simple QDROs and I still would only attempt to draft a simple QDRO that I am 100% confidant that I can do a great job on.

I also tend to err on the side of safety and address all issues and include all protective clauses that may be necessary, to protect my client and maximize the chances that the QDRO will be approved by the administrator. The less work the administrator has to do in approving the QDRO, the better. Sometimes an administrator may require a fee to process and approve the QDRO, especially if it is time consuming or complicated So it is important to addres where the money will come from the pay the fee if a fee must be paid.

Sometimes I draft simple QDROs for my divorce or divorce mediation clients because I have large percentage of low income clients and middle income clients that have a very small amount of liquid funds. (They do not have much money to spend on the divorce,) They are already my divorce clients so I know their case inside and out, I have affordable rates and I already am getting paid for the divorce so I do not need to make a profit on the QDRO. So basically in the cases where only a simple QDRO is necessary, my clients funds are limited and I believe that I can do the best job at the cheapest price.

The administrator can sometimes provide an approved template which makes drafting the QDRO more simple, less time consuming and less expensive. In other cases they may have a list of things that need to be in the QDRO for them to approve it. Since I try to include all the protective clauses necessary, many times my default QDRO already includes everything on their list. I have had a couple cases where the administrator had no guidelines. One of those cases in which the administrator had never dealt with a QDRO before.

-Christopher Overton Esq.