Employee vs. Employer Contributions
Employee contributions are always 100% vested—you can divide that at any point without worrying about forfeiture. However, employer contributions are often subject to a vesting schedule. If the employee hasn’t met the required years of service, some of those employer contributions may not belong to them yet. That also means they can’t be included in the QDRO.
We’ve seen QDROs rejected because they attempted to divide non-vested employer contributions. When drafting the order, we specifically note how to treat unvested amounts and build language to preserve post-divorce vesting if applicable.

