1. Contributions from Employee and Employer
In many plans like this, employees make pre-tax contributions, and employers offer a match—sometimes with a vesting schedule. When dividing the account via QDRO, you need to determine whether the order includes:
- Only the employee’s contributions
- Employee + employer contributions
- Any gains or losses from a specific division date forward
Make sure the QDRO spells out whether the alternate payee (the non-employee spouse) gets credit for both fully vested and yet-to-vest employer matches. Unvested funds are typically not assigned until vesting occurs, so future monitoring may be necessary.

