Sometimes clients who are in a divorce are ordered to split up assets. Some of these assets can have large penalties when surrendered. Once such example is an annuity. Often annuities have surrender charges and can also have tax penalties when they are held within an IRA. You might have a high yielding annuity that has a 10% surrender charge as well as a 10% additional tax penalty for removing funds early.
If your incremental income is taxed at 35% and you had to pay a 10 % penalty and 10% surrender charge, you could lose over 50% of the assets value to taxes and penalties. In addition, it may be hard to achieve the returns that many older higher yielding annuities are earning.
If you find yourself in such a situation, you may want to see if you can swap assets so that you can keep the annuity but pay the other party their share of its value without the penalty and tax consequences.