Читать книгу Rightfully Yours - Gary A. Shulman - Страница 25

If you don’t get any satisfaction from contacting your original divorce attorney (or if you discover that he or she retired and opened a Starbucks), it may be in your best interest to find a new family law attorney to handle the QDRO drafting for you. You may have to interview several attorneys before you find one who is somewhat comfortable with QDROs (whether they draft QDROs themselves or outsource them to a QDRO expert). If you have moved away since the divorce, find an attorney in the same jurisdiction (county) where you were divorced. Because the QDRO document is a court order, it should be signed by a judge in the same jurisdiction where your divorce took place, and preferably by the same judge who handled your divorce case (if he or she still sits on the bench).

It may also be in your best interest from a cost perspective to shop around. If the attorney is going to charge you $1,000 or more to draft your QDRO, keep looking. The QDRO process should not be very expensive — perhaps $300 to $600. Don’t be afraid to spend this money, though, if it means securing a lifetime of pension income. It’s not a bad trade-off. In any event, you should beg, borrow, or, well, don’t steal, to find the money to get the QDRO done. Every single day that you delay could be the day that your ex-husband either retires, quits his job, or dies. And if that happens, it could be too late for you to draft a QDRO. You will then receive none of the pension or savings plan benefits that were awarded to you in the divorce decree.