You may not be thinking about retirement while you are going through a divorce at a relatively young age. If you are 35 and contemplating divorce, there is a good chance that retirement is the last thing on your mind! However, it is important to think about the future and what will happen to you when you retire, even if that may seem impossibly distant right now. The terms of your divorce settlement can have a direct impact on the amount of money you have available when you retire, whether you marry again or not.
The attorneys at the Men’s Legal Center will work with you to ensure that your divorce settlement reflects a careful consideration of your retirement needs.
How Does Divorce Affect Retirement?
It may seem far-fetched to think that a divorce settlement made 30 or 40 years before retirement can have a direct impact on your quality of life at that time, but it is certainly true. There are several ways your divorce settlement can affect your retirement, including:
- QDRO agreements. You may be required to take some of your retirement funds and give them to your former spouse as part of the divorce settlement. This could have a direct impact on the principal amount available in your retirement fund, and it could take years to recover this amount in order to have the same retirement income available to you.
- Social Security. Spousal Social Security is sometimes affected by divorce but sometimes it is not. If you have been married more than 10 years, your former spouse may be entitled to payments from your Social Security funds even if the two of you are divorced. This could reduce the amount available to a second spouse if you die suddenly.
- Insurance. Insurance policies that you counted on to pay some or all of your expenses due to the death of a spouse may not be available to you after a divorce.
If you and your spouse divorce, it is important to consider what will happen given various scenarios: if you remarry, if she remarries, or if both of you remarry. Each of these events can have a direct impact on the amount of money you have available to retire.
Contact the Men’s Legal Center to get started working on a divorce agreement that will protect you now and in the years to come.