Ex Marks the Spot

It's always good to simplify your life and that includes your financial life.  Now that filing taxes for the past year is behind us I've been concentrating on doing some spring cleaning of drawers, cupboards, closets and filing cabinets.  I'm very guilty of keeping paper . . . hesitant to throw anything away.  I haven't yet joined the ranks of "only electronic filing" and that turned out to be a good thing last week.  I haven't worked for the past few years but my last job was with the government and I ran across an old file that had my paperwork in it.  When I left the government I took my "thrift plan" with me and rolled it into my IRA.  However, I still had a very small amount of money in the pension program.  I'd left it there because it was tied to the number of years of service and if I would have taken it out I would have forfeited those years.  In the back of my mind I knew that those years were important and if I ever chose to return to government service it would be nice to have credit for those years.

But now full time retirement is nearing and it's time to go after my money which has been accruing interest all these years.  I downloaded the forms for withdrawal of the funds and it seemed like the biggest challenge was to decide whether to roll it into my IRA or just take the payout.  Since I'm well over 59 1/2 there was no concern about early withdrawal penalties on retirement funds so the payout was worthy of consideration.  At this point all my retirement funds are taxable income when I take a distribution.  But also rolling it into my IRA seemed reasonable since I don't plan to tap into my IRA funds for a few more years.  

Filling out the form (3106, Application for Refund of Retirement Deductions) was pretty routine until I got to question # 11 which asked if I'm married and if so what is his name.  Well, I know the answers to that but wondered why it was necessary to disclose that.  And then came question # 12 which asked if I'd ever been married before, to whom, and the relevant dates of marriage and divorce.  Now I'm kind of irritated by the whole thing because my marriage to my ex ended 16 years before I ever went to work for the government. 

Form 3106

I read the fine print which stated that you had to disclose any current or former marriage that had lasted more than 9 months if I had also had 18 months of service with the government at any time.  Well, that was the situation regardless of the fact that we'd been married and divorced prior to my government service.  Crazy!  But even more ridiculous is that the attached form 3106A required my current spouse to actually sign the form.  And you guessed it, form 3106A also required my ex to sign the documents. 

Form 3106a instructions

Why?  So that he would be aware that I was getting retirement and he wasn't going to get any of it . . . even though I didn't work for the government when we were married.  My current husband had to sign for the same reason but we were married while I worked for the government so I guess in theory he would be entitled to know what happened to the retirement money.

I'm lucky; truly I am.  My ex and I are friends and have managed to be more than civil through the years.  Until a couple years ago he lived in CO but recently moved down the road about 60 miles to a small SE Washington town.  I was able to call him and explain the situation and ask if we could meet and he could sign the form.  My ex understood and also commented that this might be a good example of excessive government.  Yes, my dilemma was solved because my ex was willing to mark the spot.

Reading the fine print again I learned that if I'd been unable to track down my ex  I would have to swear that I didn't know his whereabouts, or let the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) try to get him to sign the papers by providing them with his address.  If he would have refused my request to sign the papers I could have two witnesses sign an affidavit that I'd tried to get him to sign.  I think my ex is right; it seems excessive.

What insight into retirement am I offering by sharing this situation?  Cleaning out files is a good thing.  Simplifying your life, including your  finances is a good thing.  Keeping a healthy relationship with an ex is a good thing because strangely you might actually need something from them even though your divorce was eons ago.