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Tammy Flanagan
Retirement Counseling and Training www.retirefederal.com
Sometimes, life comes with unpleasant surprises. From a financial planning and retirement preparation perspective, one of the most difficult is divorce.One person who knows a lot about this topic is Dan Jamison, a CPA and retired FBI special agent. Over the years, he has shared information with me that might help those going through this process. Dan specializes in assisting federal employees and annuitants with the division of retirement benefits in divorce and has written the popular FERS Retirement and Benefits Guide.CSRS or FERS retirement benefitsThe number one misunderstanding, in Dan’s experience, occurs when a former spouse of a federal employee is granted a pro-rata award of a federal retirement benefit, but there is no mention of a survivor annuity that is payable to the former spouse.Another common oversight is when a survivor annuity is awarded to a former spouse without the level of survivor annuity being defined. In such cases, the Office of Personnel Management interprets it as a full survivor annuity.Many times, employees don’t fully understand this until after retirement. After the retirement or death of the employee, the survivor annuity portion of a divorce agreement or court order can’t be modified.
