
Originally Posted by
Undertow
You are spot on... They took our assets and income and shoved them through a machine to come up with our payment/asset plan... The one shocking thing that came up was my ex works for the public school system and has a pension and the court system does not consider a pension in the same light as a 401K... My 401K was thrown into the machine, but they kept her pension out as it is viewed like social security...

Originally Posted by
LHutz Esq
That is different here. The 401k ( RRSPs are similar here) and Pensions are both family assets. It is only the gain in either over the term of the r'ship that is split though and the pension splitting formula gets a bit complex, although it does make sense. Some, especially gov't and CN pensions can be very valuable and I find that because they are complicated some folks (and possibly their lawyers?) are very quick to give them up in the negotiations.
It is likely that Undertow is forgetting or may have simply been unaware of some issues. Or his lawyer was an idiot. There was a time when some public employee groups in the U.S. could opt out of social security. So some folks don't pay in to social security, don't get benefits out of social security, instead they are enrolled in a public pension system. In that case, and in some states, the pension is treated teh same as social security, and so both parties exclude their social security benefit, or its equivalent, from the property settlement. Most pensions and retirmenet vehicles including 401(k)'s and IRAs are included in the marital estate and subject to division.
Of course, the other possibility is that Undertow's lawyer just plain didn't know what he was doing and Undertow got screwed. There's plenty of lousy lawyers out there.
"Judge me by the enemies I have made." -FDR
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