Legal Question in Family Law in Illinois

Re: Acquired pension/benefits

You can't "acquire" any benefits from your former husband now. The question is, were you given pension rights as part of the Judgment for Dissolution of Marriage. If you were, then there are some steps to take...I'd like to hear more. By way of a very short thumbnail sketch, if someone gets pension rights they are set forth in the Judgment for Dissolution of Marriage. Further, another order called a Qualified Domestic Relations Order (QDRO) gets entered that formally divides a pension/401k, ect. This should have been done at the time of the divorce although we do see these mishandled quite a bit. So if you do have pension rights and it was done properly it should just be a matter of a letter or a phone call to some pension administrator.