Pension not discussed as part of divorce.

The Scottish Widows Women and Retirement Report 2014 noted that among divorced women 84% said pensions weren’t discussed or they couldn’t remember them being discussed as part of any settlement.

This is a similar figure to previous years.

This is very worrying. Not because I believe 84% of family lawyers failed to discuss the pension but because it shows how many women have gone through divorce proceedings and not really understood the financial issues.

The relevant part of the sentence is “they couldn’t remember them being discussed”. It’s probably not surprising bearing in mind the huge emotional upheaval going on at the time.

But it is of concern that these women now worry that they may not have been dealt with fairly in the financial settlement.

Divorce Lifeline is encouraging those who have gone through a divorce where a pension was involved to contact them to see if the pension was fairly valued. And guess what…It’s on a no win, no fee basis. No surprise there, since this is effectively an ambulance chasing firm.

However, I can only imagine that because this firm has been going for over a year they are winning enough cases to make them a profitable business.

An empirical study was published by Cardiff Law School in 2014 as a detailed study into pension sharing. The report highlighted a lack of clarity in final orders and supporting documentation as to how the pensions had been valued, and taken into account. If you would like a copy of the report please click here.

The message for family lawyers is very clear: It’s vital to keep very detailed records of all discussions to show the pensions had been considered. And since some of these claims may not arise until the divorced spouse reaches retirement age, they need to be kept for a long time.

I am speaking to my clients to see what additional help they would have liked when discussing the financial settlement so that they felt more confident about the financial decisions they were making. If you are a solicitor a divorcing woman and would like to give me feedback please do call on 01932 698150. I’d be delighted to speak to you.

photo credit: flick/DrjohnBullas

Mary Waring

Mary Waring is a Chartered Accountant, Chartered Financial Planner and Money Mindset Coach, helping women transform their relationship with money so that they can become free and powerful. She is also the bestselling author of "The Wealthy Woman: A Man is Not a Financial Plan."

About the Author

If you enjoyed this post, we recommend the following as additional reading.

What mortgage will you be offered following divorce?

Mothers who work part time or work in a low paid job to be able to fit their job around general child care, will often struggle after divorce to be eligible for any reasonable sized mortgage from a bank or building society. . Even if your partner has left the marital home and you have…

It’s not all about work.

It’s not how much money you have that’s relevant, but whether you feel rich. It’s not all about work. Yesterday I had a marvellous afternoon spa day at the beautiful Pennyhill Park. It was exactly what I needed to recharge my batteries after 3 months of yet another lockdown. I had several hours of swimming,…

This was taken about halfway up the block on the east side of Broadway, between 79th and 80th Street. It's at the north end of the "Filene's Basement" store on the corner, and it's a place where I've often seen homeless people holding up a sign that asks for assistance...

With very rare exceptions, I haven't photographed these homeless people; it seems to me that they're in a very defensive situation, and I don't want to take advantage of their situation. But something unusual was happening here: the two women (who were actually cooperating, and acting in tandem, despite the rather negative demeanor of the woman on the left) were giving several parcels of food to the young homeless man on the right.

I don't know if the women were bringing food from their own kitchen, or whether they had brought it from a nearby restaurant. But it was obviously a conscious, deliberate activity, and one they had thousght about for some time...

What was particularly interesting was that they didn't dwell, didn't try to have a conversation with the young man;they gave him they food they had brought, and promptly walked away. As they left, I noticed the young man peering into his bag (the one you see on the ground beside him in this picture) to get a better sense of the delicious meal these two kind women had brought him...

**********************

This is part of an evolving photo-project, which will probably continue throughout the summer of 2008, and perhaps beyond: a random collection of "interesting" people in a broad stretch of the Upper West Side of Manhattan -- between 72nd Street and 104th Street, especially along Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue.

I don't like to intrude on people's privacy, so I normally use a telephoto lens in order to photograph them while they're still 50-100 feet away from me; but that means I have to continue focusing my attention on the people and activities half a block away, rather than on what's right in front of me.

I've also learned that, in many cases, the opportunities for an interesting picture are very fleeting -- literally a matter of a couple of seconds, before the person(s) in question move on, turn away, or stop doing whatever was interesting. So I've learned to keep the camera switched on (which contradicts my traditional urge to conserve battery power), and not worry so much about zooming in for a perfectly-framed picture ... after all, once the digital image is uploaded to my computer, it's pretty trivial to crop out the parts unrelated to the main subject.

For the most part, I've deliberately avoided photographing bums, drunks, drunks, and crazy people. There are a few of them around, and they would certainly create some dramatic pictures; but they generally don't want to be photographed, and I don't want to feel like I'm taking advantage of them. I'm still looking for opportunities to take some "sympathetic" pictures of such people, which might inspire others to reach out and help them. We'll see how it goes ...

The only other thing I've noticed, thus far, is that while there are lots of interesting people to photograph, there are far, far, *far* more people who are *not* so interesting. They're probably fine people, and they might even be more interesting than the ones I've photographed ... but there was just nothing memorable about them.

Why a husband should pass all his assets to his wife!

To be strictly correct the proper headline for this article should be: “Why the higher tax paying spouse should pass their assets to the lower paying or non earning spouse”. But I love starting off with something controversial. Why put a sensible headline when you can create havoc with a bit of controversy! Women get…