Pensions and Divorce

In this video Ursula Rice explains what you need to know about pensions and divorce. For more information on divorce and finances, click here.

No time to watch the video? Here’s the transcript:

Hello there, my name is Ursula Rice and I’m a solicitor at Family First Solicitors and I’m here to tell you broadly how to sort your pensions on divorce, hopefully in as close to four minutes as I can get it.

Starting with this, pensions come in two flavours: private pensions, also known as defined contribution pensions sometimes called money purchase sometimes called personal pensions. Second flavour, public sector pensions, so sometimes called defined benefit pensions and they work in slightly different ways the defined contribution ones over here with the Avivas, Legal and General, Scottish Widows, they’re in the stock market.

Every time you put a pound into them, the government gives you some tax back and they grow, grow, grow in the stock market. The ones in the public sector, so defined benefit pensions, which are usually public sector, but I suppose not always, they work in a different way where the government says that depending on how long you’ve worked for us and how much money you’ve made when you work for us, we’ll give you a pension of X, Y, Z.

Now, First thing to do when you know that pensions are an issue in a divorce is you need to know that you have a right if you are married to a pension sharing order.

There are other kinds of orders out there, but we’re not going to worry about those.

A pension sharing order is where whatever the kind of pension it is gets chopped in half, seventy, thirty, twenty, eighty, whatever percentage you want. Only the court can make that order. So you need to decide, firstly, is it worth pursuing one? And secondly, well, what kind of amount do you need? Sometimes in order to do the kind of maths that you need to get to those answers, you’re going to need an expert called a pensions on divorce expert, POAD, strange name. And if you’re looking for more detailed information about that, you might find it really useful to either look at the PAG report, which is done by the Nuffield Justice Centre, or an outfit called Advice Now.

Advice Now have an enormous amount of resources.

They’re very, very good, including a layman’s guide to the PAG report. And the PAG report has all these details about when you need an expert to value the pension and when you don’t need to worry about it.

Good examples of times you don’t need an expert are when the pensions are all in money, purchase, defined contribution, the stock market, Aviva type stuff, and it’s under a hundred thousand pounds.

Another example would be where your pensions are both teacher’s pensions and you’re relatively similar ages. So it’s like comparing oranges with oranges instead of apples and oranges. Your POAD, your expert report, has to be requested from the court and you have to persuade a court that it is necessary for you to have an expert report. That’s because they’re quite expensive. They can be about three thousand pounds, maybe a bit more, maybe a bit less.

Generally, the higher value pensions or the more complicated the situation is because there’s lots of pensions, the more likely a POVE report will be requested.

When do you ask the court for this? You ask them before the first appointment. And that is important. If you don’t ask them by the point of the first appointment, you will have missed your slot. And that includes if you’re a lay person or a lawyer. And also, if you’re going to ask for a pension report, you really do need to make a proper application, which is called a part twenty five application. And you will need to find a D-Eleven form, and that is the form you use to make your application.

You’ll need to pay a court fee.

You need to set out what you want and why you want it, and if you take my advice, you’ll also have already contacted a pensions on divorce expert who will have provided you with some costings and some timelines for how long they’ll take to do it.

If you need more than that, if you need advice, I would just suggest that you might want to think about coming for one of our first appointments.

They are three hundred and sixty pounds at the time of making this video and they take as long as they take. And if I can, I will advise you as far as possible so that maybe you won’t need to instruct us or use us again. But if you do need to, at least you’ll have costs and an understanding of what work we can undertake for you.

Thank you for listening to this video. I hope it’s been helpful.