Interesting article about the effects of divorce on womens finances, particularly pensions

[PyongyangKipperbang]

And the difference to the effect it has on men. You wont be surprised to read that they are better off than we are after divorce....

https://inews.co.uk/inews-lifestyle/stay-home-mum-50-divorced-no-pension-3628292

Think I’m the same @utterexasperation and maybe also my phone.

Probably worth me taking out my own credit card and barely using it. Just for the credit rating.

Don't want to mislead you.

https://frenkels.com/husband-refuses-to-complete-form-e/#:~:text=Whilst%20a%20Judge%20is%20likely,contempt%20of%20Court%20and%20imprisoned.

It absolutely does matter. Partly because two good pension pots will always be far better than one good pension pot and one poor one. Also in the event of one partner dying (and statistically, women are more likely to outlive their spouse) the surviving partner will only have their own pension plus a part of the deceased partner. Not the full thing, which many women seem to rely on.

of course there will always be outliers, women who stopped working for years or only worked part time who get divorced and do comparatively well. But I’m talking on a wider level and the sad fact is that women in their older age are far less well off than men. The statistics show that women are far less likely to have made adequate pension provision for themselves.

This is MN in a nutshell.

Absolutely

Exactly. 15 years ago was 2010. I think people are getting their decades mixed up on this thread.

i recall childminders were increasing their charges in 1998, or at least talking about national minimum wage, thus scuppering any child care i might have needed

Totally.

Majority of mothers worked in 2010

https://cy.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/articles/familiesandthelabourmarketengland/2021

Yes.

part of the pay gap is because women give up work. They don’t go for promotions because they are part time or don’t want the increased hours and demands of a higher job because they have taken on the house and child responsibilities at home.

when I first had kids dh had to fight very hard against the “can’t your wife do it” mentality when he had to leave early for pick up. I never got asked if my husband could do whatever child related need was.

if a woman is considering giving up her career for childbearing, then that is her choice. But when doing the maths she needs to factor in paying into a SIPP while she is not working.

if her husbands salary does not cover all bills and spending, plus her pension contributions and equal savings to her husband, then she needs to consider how she will support herself if she finds herself single for whatever reason.

if you give up work make sure your future is provided for financially. If one salary doesn’t cover it, don’t do it. View income as truly joint- what he puts into a pension, so do you. What he puts into an isa, so do you.

the days of final salary pensions and spousal elements are long gone, it’s everyone for themselves.

I don’t recognise this. I’m late 50s, I went to a pretty ordinary comprehensive school but was keen to go to university and I didn’t see why I couldn’t achieve just as much as the boys in my class. Of course, a far lower proportion of the population even to university back then but this applied to males too, so it wasn’t just a case of females being expected to leave school and wait for a husband or marriage. There really is some confusion about the generations and decades on this thread.

My mother’s generation, sure: she was born in the 1930s and when my sister and I came along in the 1960s, there was next to no regulated childcare or maternity rights.

But my generation - women coming towards retirement, there were opportunities. Sure, maternity leave was very short (3 months) paternity leave non existent and childcare was expensive, but loads of us got on with it, we returned to the workplace and saw ourselves as in the front line of women wanting and expecting equality. I didn’t want a husband who saw himself as just the provider and me as needing to be home all day looking after the house and kids. No way! And even without any teaching about pensions or investments, I had enough common sense to see that the less I was working and paying into an occupational pension, the less there’d be in the pot at the end.

its a fact that statistically, women are poorer than men in their older age; imo that’s something we should all be concerned about. But we need to be clear about why, and how to put that right. It astounds me that so many women still seem unaware that by being out of the workplace for years, or remaining in part time work for years, is going to massively impact on their financial future.

It sometimes feel almost sacrilege to say it on Mumsnet but some women do make poor choices, they marry men who don’t want to step up and take equal responsibility for children and home. Or in some cases, women don’t want to let them, they can be territorial about it and see it as their right to work less and be home more.

it’s about looking at the long term as well as the short term effects of our decisions and then owning them.

Quite agree. Get your own pension. I thought we wanted equality?

It isn’t just pension women need to think about, it’s earning potential. If a couple divorces in their 40s, he gets to keep his high salary to himself while she re-enters the job market at a much more junior level earning a fraction of what he does and consequently making much smaller pension contributions going forward.

No good can come from making yourself financially reliant on a man.

This post is spot on. I totally agree on the confusion around generations too. It was the early 1990s when women began to go to university in greater numbers than men - over 3 decades ago. The idea that women in their 50s grew up in vastly different times from mothers of young children now (who presumably are in their 30s and 40s) where ‘divorce was frowned upon’ and there was no childcare is complete nonsense.

perhaps i made a poor choice but i really enjoyed the fact that i could work as well as be there for my dc, i am grateful that i was able to attend special assemblies for instance, and help in out primary school, but that was my choice.

Yeah I kind of agree. To be honest I tried the working full time with 2 kids with a DH that travelled and zero family help. And I nearly had a nervous breakdown.

I do look back and think I should have demanded more from him for sure. But this was back in 2008. There was no working from home culture. There was no leave work at 4pm to get the kids (even for me too!). I used to get home at 7.30! I actually didn’t see my children all week (apart from an hour in the morning). So neither myself nor my husband saw our children… I’m not sure how that can be presented as ideal.

I’m pleased things are going in the right direction now for women. And there’s more flexible working all round.

I don’t regret my choices though. I’ve retrained. I have my own business and chose my own hours. I don’t have an amazing pension but I don’t feel financially vulnerable or that staying full time was right for me.

I am late fifties and agree with this too.

@Marshtityou feel you made the right decision then. The problem is when women don’t think ahead and don’t realise the impact of decisions they’re making and then realise too late that they’re facing an impoverished older age. Even with a supportive husband and a happy marriage, women can end up struggling if they outlive their husband. There’s a lot of misconceptions out there; I know some (intelligent capable) women believed they were ok part time for decades because ‘if my husband dies first then I’ll get all his work pension won’t I?’

the lady in the article did receive a lump sum from her exs pension so she did benefit from this.
To be honest I’ve had this conversation with some people at work in that I think it’s important to keep your own career going whilst having children as it allows you to keep your independence and pension.
She made the choice to be a sahm and reaped the benefits at the time. She could have chosen to go part time and juggle like a lot of mothers.
I’ve earned less than my husband over the years due to dropping to part time however I have good pensions so I’m not reliant on him financially anyway if we split up (no plans to). Now I’m approaching retirement I’m glad I made that choice.

I was the one who had reduced pension contributions during marriage due to a stat mat leave, but went back to work promptly then discovered later my husband hadn’t bothered paying pension in decades before we got together, so I think I’m likely to lose a lot of what I built up in public sector prior to marriage to him in divorce as he is a take all he can get person, whereas in his position I would have said no that’s yours, keep it. I think women sometimes just lose out from being nicer or being faced with a man who demands more than is fair and won’t back down.

Pensions are usually reckoned as from the time you start living together.

I understand what you mean and agree with that but the conversation was about pensions in divorce not death and my point related to that. They will be evened out.