Under the concept of community property, each spouse...
In virtually all non-community-property states, property acquired during the marriage is subject to equitable division...
These rulings do affect stock plans. Among the affected federal laws and regulations are those which shape the design and administration of...
ESPPs almost never allow the option/purchase rights to be transferred during...
Under IRS Revenue Ruling 2002-22, an employee who transfers interests in nonqualified stock options (NQSOs) to a former spouse as part of a divorce settlement...
The IRS has issued revenue rulings that clarify the withholding and tax reporting. The nonemployee-spouse would be responsible for those taxes at exercise. All tax payments (income and employment taxes) are withheld from...
This constructive trust type of arrangement can be a way to handle any transferability restrictions in your stock plan (unless the procedure is prohibited). When you assign your ex-spouse the economic benefits of the stock options, you should be careful about...
First a court must decide (under the relevant state's laws) whether the property subject to division includes...
Some courts have ruled that options are acquired at the date of grant...
The answer depends on the laws of your state. A Connecticut court answered the question affirmatively in...
Some plans allow the transfer of stock grants to a former spouse, or with stock options let the former spouse...
A qualified domestic relations order (QDRO) is a judgment, decree, or order by a court that assigns all or a portion of an individual's company benefits to...
If options were granted for future performance, an employee can argue to the court that...
To calculate the portion of divisible grants that were earned or acquired during a marriage, courts often use...
The Internal Revenue Code and IRS regulations prohibit transfers, so grant agreements cannot allow ISOs to be transferred in divorce. When divorce occurs, under the property settlement either...
When the net intrinsic value of the stock is zero, the attorney for the nonemployee-spouse has two ways to obtain...
Most companies do not require spousal acceptance and no law requires it. However, in community property states, some companies do...
You will need to hire a lawyer. Most likely...
If legal title to stock options is not being transferred under the divorce decree, the options are valued so that other property (e.g., cash or a house) can be awarded to the nonemployee-spouse...
If stock grants are merely property, the ex-spouse has no future claim to them, other than as part of the property settlement. However, divorce courts are starting to...
Generally, incentive stock options (ISOs) are not transferable in connection with a divorce. The IRS...
A transfer of shares incident to divorce is not a disqualifying disposition, but when the...
"Garnishment" is a legal process in which a debtor pays an obligation with property and/or goods that are owed to or belong to the debtor but are in the hands of a third party. Whether this remedy applies to stock options depends...
It is unresolved whether in-the-money stock options that the bankrupt individual holds (1) constitute assets of the bankrupt party that are reachable by the creditors or (2) are...
Tax errors can be costly! Don't draw unwanted attention from the IRS. Our Tax Center explains and illustrates the tax rules for sales of company stock, W-2s, withholding, estimated taxes, AMT, and more.
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