Employee and Employer Contributions
Employee contributions—the amounts the participant has personally deferred from their paycheck—are always 100% vested and can be divided in a QDRO. The trickier part is the employer contributions. Many business entity plans like this one use vesting schedules tied to years of service. If a portion of the account includes employer contributions that aren’t fully vested, the nonvested portion is not available to a former spouse until (or unless) it vests in the future. A properly worded QDRO can include language to address what happens to those nonvested funds.

