Sponsors (13)
Introduced March 12, 2025 by Tammy Baldwin · Last progress March 12, 2025
The bill strengthens spousal protections and directs federal funding to help women and survivors secure retirement assets—improving equity and enforcement—while creating new administrative burdens and recurring federal costs that may fall on employers, participants, and taxpayers, and that could concentrate grant dollars among larger organizations.
Spouses and plan participants (especially married workers and retirees) gain stronger legal protections against unilateral rollovers or full distributions—requiring consent/notice and creating an individual right to enforce those protections—helping preserve survivor and divorce-related retirement assets.
Low-income women, survivors of domestic violence, and other women of working and retirement age will get funded local legal and financial assistance and targeted financial-literacy programs to help obtain QDROs and improve retirement planning, increasing access to and preservation of retirement assets.
Community-based organizations expanding services for women and survivors receive predictable federal grant funding (with minimum award sizes), enabling program expansion and sustained outreach to improve financial capability and retirement security.
Employers and plan sponsors—especially small businesses—face increased administrative, compliance and recordkeeping costs (from spousal-consent rules, new enforcement exposure, and retroactive application requirements) that may be passed on to participants via higher fees or reduce plan availability.
Taxpayers will fund recurring federal programs (approximately $200 million per year across the new grants) to support women's financial-literacy and QDRO/legal assistance, increasing federal spending and budgetary pressures.
Minimum grant award sizes (e.g., $250,000) and competitive requirements risk excluding smaller local groups, concentrating funds among larger organizations and reducing local or grassroots reach.
Based on analysis of 7 sections of legislative text.
Requires spousal written consent for many defined-contribution distributions/rollovers, mandates CFPB links on retirement product sites, and funds grants for women's retirement literacy and QDRO help.
Requires most defined contribution and individual-account retirement plans to obtain a spouse’s written, witnessed (or notarized) consent before certain distributions or rollovers, with limited exceptions, and creates a private right of action and a corresponding tax qualification rule for noncompliant plans. It also requires retirement product websites to link to the CFPB’s retirement resources and authorizes two grant programs (financial literacy and QDRO assistance) funded at $100 million per program each fiscal year starting FY2026, with minimum grant awards of $250,000.