§ 1733.1.Joint Application For the Recognition of a Tribal Court Order

Retirement plans and deferred-compensation accounts sometimes need to be divided or assigned to satisfy a tribal court's child support, spousal support, or marital property order, and the plan administrator typically wants a state-court order it recognizes before it will honor an assignment. Section 1733.1 supplies that recognition path separately from the general application process in Section 1733. If both parties to the underlying tribal court proceeding agree, they file a joint application asking the superior court to recognize the tribal court order and its assignment of benefits to an alternate payee. If one party won't join, the other can still proceed by having the tribal court itself execute a certificate in lieu of that party's signature, using a format the Judicial Council adopts.

The application follows its own rules: a Judicial Council form signed under penalty of perjury, each party's contact information, the issuing tribal court's name and address, and a certified copy of the order, filed with a $100 fee in the county where either party resides, a more flexible venue rule than Section 1733's general standard. Recognition under this section comes with a real limit, though: entering the tribal court order doesn't give a California court any new authority to modify or enforce that order going forward.