Nolo's Essential Guide to Divorce - Emily Doskow [167]
If your spouse agreed, as part of your divorce negotiation, to buy or keep life or disability insurance with you or your kids as the beneficiaries, follow up. Your marital settlement agreement should say that you are entitled to get information about the policy. Your postdivorce task, then, is to follow up with a letter to the insurance company letting it know that you have this right, and asking to be notified if there's any change in the policy or any problem with premium payments. Send a certified copy of your divorce order with the provision about your access to information highlighted, and say you'll he checking in regularly to confirm the order's being complied with. Send a copy of the letter to your ex, too.
If you didn't get an order like this from the court, or if your spouse bought the insurance later, then ask your former spouse to voluntarily provide you with documentation that the insurance is in place.
Auto insurance. Contact your insurance company and make sure the vehicle you're driving is properly insured and that you're the only owner of the insurance policy. It's likely that after the car was transferred into your name alone a new policy was issued with you (and possibly your driving-age kids) as the only insured. Get a copy of the declaration page, the sheet that says what coverage you have and who is covered.
6. Update Other Beneficiary Designations and Your W-4
Make sure you've considered all the possible places you might have named your spouse as a beneficiary, and change any of those you want to change. Think about:
• pension plans
• retirement accounts
• payable-on-death bank accounts, and
• securities accounts for which you named a transfer-on-death beneficiary.
Ask your human resources department or the account custodian (the brokerage house where you have an IRA, for instance) to help you be sure you've filled out all the right forms. Under some plans your ex-spouse may have to sign something acknowledging that you're changing beneficiaries.
While you're visiting the human resources folks, check on whether you need to update your W-4. If you've been claiming a withholding exemption for your spouse, you must give your employer a new W-4 within ten days of your divorce becoming final, showing a corrected number of exemptions.
7. Protect Your Retirement Rights
If you and your spouse divided retirement plans, you need to make sure that all the dividing actually happened. If the retirement plan was a defined benefit plan, you undoubtedly asked the court to enter a QDRO, or qualified domestic relations order, requiring the plan administrator to split pension payments between you and your exspouse when the payments eventually become due.
If a QDRO was part of your divorce settlement or judgment, make sure the order actually gets written, signed by the judge, and made a part of your court file. The QDRO is separate from the order that says you're divorced. This is a detail that's easy to overlook, especially if the divorce order doesn't say who's responsible for preparing the QDRO. Generally, the spouse who will be getting benefits from the other's retirement takes charge, but not always. And even if the divorce order says your spouse is supposed to do it, if you're the nonemployee spouse, it's in your interest to make sure the order gets entered so there's no confusion or hassle later-and you don't face the possibility of losing your pension rights.
If you have a lawyer, the lawyer should take care of this. If you don't, then hire an actuary or attorney who specializes in QDRO preparation to help you get the order written and entered.
After the order is signed, get a couple of certified copies from the court. Keep one in a very safe place, along with information about the pension plan so that you know who to contact if you have questions. Send the other to the employer or plan administrator. There's nothing more you need to do until it's time for the pension to be paid out.
Questions? You can get more information