Yes, a QDRO can be filed with the court after the Judgment of Divorce or Judgment of Separate Maintenance is final. (You may want to read this post about the Statute of Limitations for QDROs.)
Although a QDRO may be filed at the time of divorce or even earlier (if the court has jurisdiction to issue a domestic relations order), it is quite common (probably around 99% of the time) for the QDRO to be filed after the Judgment is final. The primary reason why this occurs is that many retirement plans will review a draft of the QDRO before the QDRO is entered with the court. The review process can take several weeks or even longer. Most family law attorneys prefer to wrap up the divorce or legal separation without delay. Holding up the divorce simply to divide a retirement account or pension is not in the interest of the their clients.
Nonetheless, an reasonable alternative exists that very few attorneys consider. A QDRO may be drafted and entered with the court at the same time as the Judgment. If the retirement plan finds the QDRO unacceptable, revisions are made and the QDRO is amended. The benefits of this approach are: (1) attorneys can essentially avoid drafting retirement account and pension language into the Judgment and simply incorporate the QDRO(s) into the Judgment; (2) if an initial QDRO is accepted by a retirement plan, the parties are spared a separate signing session and your attorney is spared an additional trip to the courthouse; (3) there are certain risks during the period of time between the entry of the Judgment and the entry of a post-Judgment QDRO (see our Timing Considerations & Malpractice Traps article). The only drawback to this approach is that some plans might be somewhat surprised to receive an court-entered QDRO before seeing a draft. This should not, however, subject the QDRO to a more exacting review than a draft QDRO submission.
If you are a divorcing party who prefers the approach outlined above, simply inform you attorney that you want the QDRO simultaneously entered with the Judgement even if the plan has not reviewed a draft. If you receive resistance, then you might want to refer to the Timing Considerations & Malpractice Traps article. Typically, we only need two weeks lead time to prepare a QDRO. If you hire us to prepare a QDRO prior to entry of the Judgment, please complete our standard request form and include any caption page in lieu of the final Judgment. If you decide to go this route, we never charge an additional fee if the retirement plan requests revisions to the QDRO requiring an amendment.
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