Divorce & Your Pension (2024)

Facts About Community Property

In California, all types of retirement benefits are considered community property, which allows CalPERS benefits to be divided upon a dissolution of marriage or registered domestic partnership or legal separation.

For CalPERS purposes, community property is the contributions you made and the service credit you accrued and/or purchased during your marriage or domestic partnership. Generally, your former spouse's community property interest may be up to 50 percent of your pension benefit.

We won't release pension benefits to you or your former spouse until the community property claim is resolved.

For retirees: One-half of your monthly allowance is held until the claim is resolved.

More information about community property is available in A Guide to CalPERS Community Property (PUB 38A) (PDF),CalPERS Model Domestic Relations Orders (PUB 38B) (PDF), and Facts About Community Property (PDF).

Claims

Your former spouse or their attorney can place a community property claim against your CalPERS pension at any time.

These are the steps to resolve your community property claim:

Claim Notification

Submit the Proposed Court Order to CalPERS (First Review)

Submit a Qualified Domestic Relations Order (QDRO) to CalPERS with the proposed language explaining how the CalPERS benefits will be divided.

CalPERS Reviews

Within 60 days, CalPERS will review the draft QDRO and let the parties know if we can accept the order as written or if changes need to be made.

Submit QDRO to the Court

After CalPERS approves the QDRO, file the order with the court. Any party can do this — you, your former spouse, or an attorney.

Submit the Filed Court Order to CalPERS (Second Review)

Send CalPERS a copy of the filed QDRO. Within 60 days, CalPERS will review the filed QDRO to ensure the language is acceptable.

Claim Resolution

CalPERS benefits are released.

Once CalPERS determines the filed QDRO is acceptable, the claim is resolved, and benefits can be released.

If you have a retirement application on file, allow 60 days from either your retirement application received date or retirement date, whichever is later, to start receiving your benefits.
If you're a retiree, allow 60 days for your monthly benefit to be adjusted.
If you're still working, the community property claim remains on your account until you retire.

Calculation

One of the methods used to calculate your former spouse's community property interest is the "time rule formula."

See the following example:

Steps	Calculation
1	Your pension benefit. $7,500
2	Divide the service credit from date of marriage until date of separation by your total service credit. 12.000 years accrued during the marriage period (1996-2008) / 25.000 years = 0.480
3	Multiply by your pension benefit. 0.480 x $7,500 = $3,600
4	Multiply the total by 50%. $3,600 x 50% = $1,800 The $1,800 per month is your former spouse's community property interest.