Trial court should be alert to advantages of dividing retirement at the time of divorce rather than postponing the actual division until employee-spouse retires. Where there are sufficient assets to divide the present value without causing an undue hardship, this method is preferred.
Current value of pension plan must be reduced for future taxes.
Trial court has discretion to determine appropriate discount rate in order to value a pension.
Pension should not be valued on basis of continued employment to age 65 because that is based on assumption husband would keep working and credit the wife with his post-divorce employment.
No value for pension where odds of ever collecting it were speculative and improbable.
Where there was affirmative, uncontradicted, expert testimony of tax rate on retirement plans, trial court must either accept it or explain why it found the testimony improbable or the witness discredited.
When court uses QDRO to divide a pension, present value of the parties’ interests is irrelevant to the property division.
Trial court fairly treated pension plans by comparing monthly benefits of husband’s plan and wife’s plan, rather than finding present value of each plan.