What Tracing Non-Marital Retirement Taught Me
From the Settlements Done Right newsletter. Why tracing the non-marital portion of a retirement account is not optional, and what happens when a client is told it is not worth the effort.
In this edition, Denisa shares that in 2025 TOVA traced $11.2 million in non-marital retirement assets, much of it for clients who had first been told the work was not worth it. The lesson: a plan administrator will not separate the marital from the non-marital portion of a 401(k) or an IRA. Someone has to do that work, or separate property gets divided as if it were marital.
The takeaways
- Tracing the non-marital portion is the difference between dividing what is actually marital and handing over separate property by default.
- "The statements are gone" is rarely the end of the road. Vintage account records, W-2s, Social Security earnings records, and a plan's own internal ledgers can reconstruct the history from the date of marriage forward.
- One case recovered the full picture from a TIAA internal ledger after the PDF statements were missing.
Go deeper in the forensic tracing guide and the records discovery guide.
TOVA is not a law firm and does not give legal or tax advice. Counsel makes the legal calls.
Read the full edition
This edition was published in Settlements Done Right, Denisa's biweekly newsletter for divorce attorneys.
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