If you’re thinking about getting divorced and you’re over 50 years old, you may be worried about retirement. You’re in a gray divorce, at this age, and the day that you step away from your career is rapidly growing closer. You want to make sure that you are still financially secure and able to retire as you planned.
The short answer is that divorce is likely going to impact your retirement in some ways. There’s just no way around the increased cost of living after divorce, and that will play a role. You also do have to divide your assets with your spouse. But here are some things to consider to make things go smoothly.
Using a QRDO
The first thing you can do is consider a QDRO if you and your spouse have any sort of retirement plan or pension plan. This document sets things up so that the plan gets divided between the two of you. This does not necessarily mean it will be split in half – your ex may earn some of those benefits before or after your marriage – but you will likely get a portion of the retirement plan.
Securing your assets
Furthermore, this just underscores why you need to make sure that you get the assets you truly deserve during the property division process. There are some cases when spouses will try to hide assets from each other. Not only do not want to do this, but you need to be wary that your spouse may commit this type of fraud and you need to know how to look for those hidden assets.
You may be in for a complicated divorce, and you need to make sure you know about all of your legal options.
