What if the bulk of a person's retirement account was accrued before marriage?

Yes, that's taken into account. So if you acquired property prior to marriage as long as there's no commingling then that would be considered a premarital asset and would not be subject to division. But it could be a factor in how the property is divided.

So in certain states you have equal division and you have equitable division.

So in Illinois, for example, we have something called equitable division, meaning that the judge doesn't have to do 50/50. The judge can say hey, this guy, he has a house that he acquired prior to the marriage. So he's stable. He's fine. But the wife doesn't have any property. So what we're going to do is we're going to give 60 percent to the wife and 40 percent to the husband. Because he has a retirement or a house that he had prior to the marriage. Again another reason whether you're the husband or the wife to make sure that you have a prenuptial agreement to dictate how things are going to be divided because in an equitable state It could be 60 something crazy like that, too.