BROADCASTS.com

b'with\\xa0Matthew Lundy, Esq.,\\xa0Certified Divorce Financial Analyst
Divorce Planning For Financial Assets
Matthew L. Lundy, Esq. and his law firm specialize in handling domestic relations and family law litigation, along with divorce planning and estate planning. He has developed a reputation as a young lawyer with a special skill for handling complicated legal issues. Matthew has been honored as a "Rising Star" by Super Lawyers Magazine and as an \\u201cOutstanding Young Lawyer\\u201d by the American Registry.
Matt has seen a lot of complicated cases and has helped many deserving individuals get their fair share in retirement. He also addresses the impact of market fluctuations on retirement portfolio values and how a couple should navigate the complicated finances behind divorce.\\xa0 He sheds light on the complexities behind retirement accounts and offers divorce planning tips on how to divide assets, especially equity assets, so you don\\u2019t lose out by having to sell when the market is down.
Qualified Domestic Relations Order
Matt explains his specialty, the QDRO, Qualified Domestic Relations Order, a term that often comes up in divorce cases and is a court order that essentially divides up retirement plans for couples going through divorce. Plans include any retirement and pension plans set up by employers in the private sector under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA).
He says QDROs are complicated because the subject matter of retirement plans is complicated and goes beyond what most people need to know on a routine basis, which is how much they have in the plan, what their holdings are, and a few trading basics.\\xa0 In divorce planning, you have to get very specific about what the plan is and how it\'s being divided.\\xa0 It\\u2019s not as easy as a simple \\u201cdivide by two\\u201d because it depends on the securities you hold in the plan.\\xa0 He cites the example of a checking account, where the cash value does not fluctuate if you make no transactions, so that is easy to divide.\\xa0 But when a retirement account has a collection of fairly complicated investments\\u2014with stocks, options, mutual funds, ETFs, bonds, etc.\\u2014values can sharply change within a few hours/days/weeks, so categorizing what is in the portfolio and determining how and when it should be divided is no straightforward task.
Matt\\u2019s Most Interesting Case\\u2014The Uncompromising Pilot
On Steve\\u2019s prompting, Matt says he has seen a lot of interesting cases in divorce planning, in the context of family law.
One case that stands out for him, very early in his career, is where a woman with two children was getting a divorce. Her husband, who was a pilot and made about $200,000 a year, refused to pay any child support or alimony.\\xa0 He wouldn\'t even pay for the house and, basically, abandoned everybody and left.
The woman was in dire need of money when she came to Matt\\u2019s law firm.\\xa0 They went straight to court.\\xa0 On hearing her case, the judge was absolutely irate with her husband for his behavior and wanted to throw him in jail.
Rather than have him thrown in jail, however, Matt and his team asked the judge to enter a QDRO for the entire balance of the husband\\u2019s 401(k), which was about $400,000.\\xa0 The judge agreed and took the entire account and assigned it to her.\\xa0 Essentially, what they did was use the QDRO as an enforcement mechanism for a non-compliant person.
Everyone Loses With A Shrinking Portfolio
Next, Steve wonders what happens when a plan\\u2019s assets shrink over the course of a year, say from $500,000 to $250,000.\\xa0 Matt says those are classified as passive gains and losses based on market fluctuations, and each party eats half the loss.
Within the purview of divorce planning, he also talks about the more complicated division of Defined Benefit Plans that factor in issues such as the income stream, periodic cost-of-living adjustments,'