"I would love to have their business model, because they refuse to speak with anybody. You can't get a human being, and there is no negotiation," said Burns, the QDRO and pension valuation expert. "It's just pay them the amount or you don't get the QDRO. If you change an and or a but, they will refuse to accept the form and you get charged $1,200."
Materially altering the form by changing a specific definition of a term such as earnings, or wanting to arrange payments from the retirement account in a way not offered on the form, would cost $1,200, said Michael Shamrell, a Fidelity spokesman. "Inconsequential or jurisdictional changes would not result in a higher fee—such as the court requiring inclusion of specific language, or minimal changes to content," he said.
Fidelity noted that 10 to 15 percent of the company's plan sponsors use it as an administrator of QDROs. It did 11,200 in 2016, and 62 percent went through its web site. At Vanguard, less than a fifth of the plans for which it does record-keeping use it for QDROs, said Vanguard spokesperson Emily Farrell in an email.
Rough industry analysis that Vanguard has seen "suggests that fees are trending slightly upward," Farrell said. Vanguard's pricing has had "some upticks over the last decade, consistent with industry trends, but they have been small."
Still, as more Americans ask, What's a QDRO? and What's this QDRO thing you're billing me for? and Why am I paying $1,800 for a blanking QDRO?, it is becoming an unwelcome part of our financial vocabulary.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.