An arm of the U.S. Labor Department has completed work on a regulation that will affect payment of pension benefits to alternate payees.
The Employee Benefits Security Administration has published a final rule on the “time and order of issuance of domestic relations orders” today in the Federal Register.
The final rule, which will take effect Aug. 9, is a version of an interim final rule published on March 7, 2007, which was adopted to implement a QDRO provision in the Pension Protection Act of 2006.
The Employee Retirement Income Security Act normally prohibits creditors from getting at a pension plan participant’s plan benefits or assets.
In 1986, Congress added a section to the Internal Revenue Code, Section 414(p), that lets benefits to be assigned to an alternate payee through a QDRO, officials write in a preamble to the new final regulations.
Alternate payees could include a participant’s spouse, former spouse, child, or other dependent.