Location: California
Hello, I’m in pretty desperate need of some advice and I’m hoping to get some answers. About 4 years ago, my parents divorced. I was only 15 when it happened so I wasn’t too aware of how things were split, but I ended up living with my mom and hardly speaking to my dad. My mom always said she was supposed to get half of his Navy retirement pension fund, but when they divorced he was still working so we just had to wait.
About a month ago when we were having some major finance issues my mom thought of this again and decided to look through all her old divorce paperwork and found the documents listing everything she was entitled to half of – it was nearly a dozen different retirement and investment accounts my dad had that she either was unaware of or had forgotten about. Through some digging we discovered he had retired about two years ago, yet we still haven’t gotten any of the money she was entitled to. Her lawyers were absolutely no help, they said it was all out of their hands and that they hadn’t had this issue before. Now they flat out stopped responding to her emails.
We are financially struggling pretty bad and cannot afford to hire an attorney to help us out. We really need her half of the retirement fund and all those extra ones my dad had. We have the paperwork from the divorce saying she is entitled to half of it all but we are so deeply confused on how to get it. We would like to be reimbursed for the years she never got anything, but at this point we just really want to start seeing the money. Does anyone have any ideas of what we should do, or who we should go to? I’ve been trying to convince her to start a go fund me to get a lawyer but I don’t know if any lawyer can help considering what her former divorce lawyers said.
We filled out the form from DFAS (Navy retirement fund) form to see if we can finally start getting the money from that, but they won’t respond to our emails and one of the things needed for us to apply for it is a W2 form from my dad but he refuses to speak to my mom so we don’t know how to get that filled. Thank you to anyone who can help and give some advice.