Tips From the Pros: After the Divorce: What About Qualified Plan Beneficiary Designations?Tips From the Pros: After the Divorce: What About Qualified Plan Beneficiary Designations?

A typical divorce is a long, expensive and stressful ordeal. By the end of the process, an exhausted client may have little patience for attending to seemingly insignificant, and what may appear to the client to be unnecessary, details. There usually are, however, important matters left to address before the client can leave a failed marriage in the rear view mirror forever. Among these is changing the beneficiary designation pertaining to a qualified retirement plan if the ex-spouse is named as primary beneficiary. If that beneficiary designation isn’t changed, the ex-spouse may be entitled to receive the participant’s interest in the plan at the participant’s death—even if the ex-spouse waived, by explicit language incorporated into th...