Updated August 25, 2026. Quick answer: Two federal bodies publish a number for what a QDRO costs, and almost nobody quotes either. The Thrift Savings Plan charges $600 to process a court order dividing an account. The PBGC estimates $700 in professional fees to prepare one, in the Paperwork Reduction Act notice printed inside its own QDRO booklet. Those are two different costs, and on a TSP account you can face both.
The two published federal figures
| Who publishes it | Figure | What it is | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thrift Savings Plan | $600 | the plan’s own processing fee for a court order | TSPBK11 |
| PBGC | $700 | the agency’s own estimate of the professional fee to prepare one | QDRO booklet |
| CalPERS | $24 per hour + $0.10 a page | clerical cost of producing the member record the order needs | Community Property |
Three published figures, three different things. Adding them is not a total and this page does not add them for you.
The Thrift Savings Plan states it plainly: “The participant will pay a $600 RBCO processing fee when the TSP receives the initial court order, unless the court order specifically allocates the fee to the parties in a different manner .” That is the plan’s fee for handling the order. It is not the lawyer’s fee, and it is charged whether or not a lawyer drafted well.
The PBGC figure is in a place people do not read. Federal publications carry a Paperwork Reduction Act burden statement, and PBGC’s says: “PBGC estimates that the average burden of preparing a QDRO with the assistance of PBGC’s booklet will be 3/4 hour of the participant’s or alternate payee’s time and $700 in professional fees if the participant or alternate payee hires an attorney or other professional to prepare the QDRO.” A federal agency putting its own number on the drafting cost, in a document about its own plans.
Put them side by side and the shape of the cost changes. On a TSP account with a lawyer drafting the order, the two published figures together come to $1,300, and only one of them is negotiable.
The TSP’s order is not a QDRO, and its fee is still the biggest published number
Worth being exact about, because the two are constantly conflated. An order dividing a Thrift Savings Plan account is a retirement benefits court order under FERSA and the board’s own regulations, not a QDRO under ERISA – we cover why that distinction defeats otherwise-competent orders on the TSP court-order page.
That page sets out the drafting rules in full and does not mention a fee anywhere on it. This is the number that belongs beside them: $600, charged to the participant when the initial order arrives.
The number your plan will charge is already written down
ERISA requires it. Every plan “shall establish reasonable procedures to determine the qualified status of domestic relations orders and to administer distributions under such qualified orders” – and those procedures are the document in which the plan states its own fee, its model language, and what it will reject.
So the plan’s fee is not a thing to be discovered after the fact. It is obtainable for free, in writing, before you pay anyone. Ask the plan administrator for the written QDRO procedures. If a drafter cannot tell you what the plan charges, they have not read them either.
The cost nobody budgets: getting the records
Dividing a pension means proving what it was worth on particular dates, which means getting the plan’s own file. CalPERS publishes what that costs: “Pursuant to section 1563 of the California Evidence Code, CalPERS charges $24 an hour in clerical costs, plus 10 cents per page copying costs .”
It is a small number that arrives at a bad moment, and it is per hour of somebody else’s clerical time, which you do not control.
What this page deliberately does not answer
Who pays for the QDRO is a separate question with a separate answer, and we already publish it. That page says in terms that we had not surveyed fees and would not publish figures as though we had. This page is that survey, as far as published federal sources go, and it is still not a market rate.
Read who pays for the QDRO for the allocation question and the clause to get into the decree. Note in particular that the TSP’s own sentence contemplates the decree allocating its fee differently – which is exactly the clause that page tells you to insist on.
What this page does not settle
This page publishes three figures that named federal bodies published about themselves. It is not a survey of what QDRO drafters charge, and no such survey is cited here because we did not do one.
The two dollar figures here are a federal plan’s published fee and a federal agency’s published estimate. Neither is a market survey and neither is a quote for your plan.
No private employer plan’s QDRO fee is published here. Those fees live in each plan’s written QDRO procedures, which we did not obtain for any private plan this session.
Who pays is a separate question and is answered on our existing page, not here.
The Thrift Savings Plan order is an RBCO under FERSA, not a QDRO under ERISA. Its fee is quoted here because it is the largest published plan fee we found, not because a TSP order is a QDRO.
Sources
- 29 U.S.C. § 1056(d)(3)(G)(ii) — https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title29-section1056&num=0&edition=prelim
- CalPERS, Community Property (member publication) — https://www.calpers.ca.gov/docs/forms-publications/community-property.pdf
- PBGC, Qualified Domestic Relations Orders and PBGC (Paperwork Reduction Act statement) — https://www.pbgc.gov/sites/default/files/qdro.pdf
- Thrift Savings Plan, Court Orders and Powers of Attorney (TSPBK11) — https://www.tsp.gov/publications/tspbk11.pdf
Related: Who Pays for the Forensic Accountant in a Gray Divorce · Divorce Filing Fees by State · who bears it, which is a different question · why a TSP order is not a QDRO.
General information drawn from the primary statutes, regulations and published federal plan documents named above, not legal, tax or financial advice. Court fees change, and the figures here are what each statute said on the date above; check the section before relying on it.
The order is one line item among several. What the whole thing costs depends first on the route you take (mediation, collaborative or litigation), and the cost estimator puts the pieces together.