CRA Form T2220: How to Transfer RRSPs After Divorce Without a Tax Bill

Your divorce settlement says your ex gets $80,000 of your RRSP. If you simply withdraw the money and hand it over, you've just created an $80,000 taxable withdrawal — added to your income, taxed at your marginal rate, and gone from your retirement savings forever. Done properly, the same transfer moves the money tax-free, with no impact on anyone's contribution room. The difference is one form: CRA Form T2220.

What T2220 does

Form T2220 (Transfer from an RRSP, RRIF, PRPP or SPP to Another RRSP, RRIF, PRPP or SPP on Breakdown of Marriage or Common-law Partnership) authorizes a direct, tax-deferred transfer of registered funds between former spouses or common-law partners.

When it's done right:

• No tax is triggered at the time of transfer — the money moves between registered accounts without ever being "withdrawn."
• The recipient doesn't use up any RRSP contribution room.
• The transferor doesn't report the amount as income.
• The funds keep their registered status and keep growing tax-sheltered.

It works for RRSPs, RRIFs, PRPPs, and SPPs — in any combination, in either direction.

The conditions you must meet

CRA will only honor the transfer if all of these are true:

1. You have a written separation agreement or court order. For Quebec divorces, that's typically the divorce judgment from the Superior Court (final after the 31-day appeal window) or a notarized separation agreement. A verbal arrangement or a text message doesn't qualify.
2. The transfer settles rights arising from the relationship breakdown. The amount must be part of the property division — in Quebec, usually flowing from the family patrimony partition or the matrimonial regime settlement.
3. You and your ex are living separate and apart because of the breakdown.
4. The money moves directly between registered accounts. Institution to institution, RRSP to RRSP. If it passes through your hands — even for a day — it's a withdrawal, and the tax treatment is lost.

That fourth point is where most mistakes happen. The receiving spouse must open their own RRSP first so the funds have somewhere to land. You can't park the money in a chequing account "temporarily."

The actual sequence, step by step

1. Wait for the right moment. In Quebec, registered account transfers generally can't be executed until the divorce judgment is final — after the 31-day appeal period, when the certificate of divorce becomes available. Trying to move RRSPs during the separation, before the legal instrument exists, is one of the classic post-divorce traps.
2. Recipient opens an RRSP (if they don't already have one) at their chosen institution.
3. Complete Form T2220. Both spouses sign it. It's a short form — the work is in the attachments.
4. Attach the legal document: certified copy of the divorce judgment or the signed separation agreement.
5. Submit everything to the institution holding the funds — not to CRA. The bank or brokerage executes the transfer; CRA never touches the paperwork unless asked later.
6. Confirm the transfer registered correctly. Both parties should get confirmation statements. The recipient's institution reports the incoming amount properly so it isn't treated as a new contribution.

Timing matters for your taxes too: remember the separate 90-day rule — you must report your change in marital status to CRA and Revenu Québec once you've been separated 90 days, because benefits like the Canada Child Benefit and the Solidarity Tax Credit are recalculated from that point.

Mistakes that turn a tax-free transfer into a tax bill

• Withdrawing instead of transferring. Any RRSP money that leaves the registered world is taxable income to the owner, withholding tax deducted at source. There's no fixing it after the fact.
• Letting the transfer fail for want of a destination account. If your ex hasn't opened an RRSP, nothing can move. Chase this early.
• Forgetting spousal RRSP rules. If the account being divided is a spousal RRSP, attribution and contributor rules add a layer — and after separation, contributions to a spousal RRSP must stop entirely.
• Assuming the bank handles it automatically. Financial institutions execute transfers only when they receive the signed T2220 plus the judgment or agreement. Nobody at the bank is tracking your divorce timeline — the paperwork initiative is entirely yours.
• TFSA confusion. T2220 covers RRSP/RRIF/PRPP/SPP. TFSAs can also transfer tax-free on relationship breakdown under a separate mechanism (direct transfer, again with the written agreement), but the form and rules differ — don't assume one form covers both.

The bottom line

Form T2220 is the single piece of paper standing between a clean, tax-free division of retirement savings and a five-figure surprise tax bill. The rules are simple — written agreement, direct transfer, proper timing — but nobody executes them for you. In Quebec, the transfer becomes possible the moment your divorce judgment is final, and it belongs near the top of your post-judgment task list.

The Quebec After-Divorce Checklist includes a retirement-division tracker that walks through RRSP transfers, QPP and CPP credit splits, and private pension partitions in the right order, with the exact documents each institution will ask for.

See more Quebec guides →