Did you recently complete a divorce in Arizona, Florida, or Texas but you or your spouse earned a pension benefit from the state of Illinois? If you or your ex-spouse participated in an Illinois State Pension like TRS, IMRF, PABF, FABF, SURS, SERS, JRS or any other Illinois State Pension, you may be learning that the State Pensions here will not accept your Divorce Decree/Judgment as filed in your home state to divide or assign your pension.
What does this mean if you were assigned a portion of your ex-spouse participant’s pension in your divorce documents? It means you will first need to enroll your divorce here in Illinois before a Qualified Illinois Domestic Relations Order or QILDRO, which secures your rights to a portion of the pension as an alternate payee, can be accepted and processed by the pension.
To divide the Illinois State Pension, a QILDRO (and in many cases a consent form) is required to be signed and entered in an Illinois state court. Enrolling your foreign judgment (out of state divorce decree) is the first step for an Illinois court to execute and enter your QILDRO.
Our office is here to help effectuate the intent of your dissolution agreement. As a firm that specializes in retirement assignment, we can file your divorce decree from your home state with an Illinois court. This is called a “foreign enrollment.” Enrolling a foreign judgment is to domesticate a judgment entered by a court in another state or country. This will allow the Judgment to be honored as an Illinois judgment and enforceable under Illinois laws. To accomplish this, we make all the necessary appearances, motions, signatures and certifications so the pension can be properly assigned per your out-of-state divorce agreement.
To learn more about this process and what is needed for your Foreign Enrollment, please reach out to us and we will be happy to send you more details.
Cheri McIntyre, MBA, CDFA®, Executive Director
Anne Prenner Schmidt, Esq.