Can he go after her pension?

[mouche202]

My best friend is going through a rocky patch in her marriage and has asked me to research what her finances might be if they divorce.

She has been married for 15 years and has one child. She has worked throughout her marriage apart from mat leave and a 9 month career break. Her husband has been in and out of work and has mostly earned less than her. Total time out of work maybe 3 years in the past 15 - a few months at a time.

They own a house jointly. Her pension is roughly ten times his (he only started one recently, it seems). Most savings in her name as she's more interested in that sort of thing.

She knows they will split the house and probably the savings but is worried about her pension. She wouldn't mind sharing that if he had been a SAHP but he has never done much parenting even when he was out of work. Could he make a claim on her pension?

@Purplewithred and a current financial statement, it's not nice to discover years down the line that things aren't what you thought.

This has opened my eyes too.

Yes, oh yes!

@Purplewithred

Before marriage there really should be a compulsory "terms and conditions" document/training session, so people understand exactly what they are letting themselves in for.

Agree 100%

I’d add “saver” to “grafter.”

I can see, with my DP’s exH, that it’s perfectly possible to be earning a good six figure salary with annual five figure bonuses and still be scratching around for cash at the end of every month. Easy come, easy go can on a high income put you in much the same situation as someone earning peanuts.

You can’t remortgage holidays, and brand new cars quickly depreciate.

Yes. Works both ways you know.

@Nat6999

My pension was worth 10 times my exh but I got to keep it all & the house, the forms just asked what my pension was & the value, I put it was a final salary one & my current annual salary & it never got picked up.

That’s just lucky for you then, and negligent of your exs solicitor then, f he used one. But bear in mind this has changed fairly recently…pensions did not used to get considered automatically , but they are now and D81 ask for valuation of pension, defined benefit or not. If you filled it in and valued it effectively at zero then you are in a minority

@TwinkleTwinkleLittleStarFightr

This turned out much more interesting than I though!

So (absolutely in theory only, because we have no plans to split) if my DH and I were to split he would get more than 50% of assets because he doesn’t work? I always assumed it would just be a 50:50 split and then each party goes on their way.

So (at the risk of sounding begrudging here), I work my arse off 60hrs+per week for 30 years while he plays Xbox, and he ultimately benefits from it if we were to split?

No. There is a list of criteria . Things like children have to be considered first. Then it works on a needs basis and facets like current lifestyle, age, length of marriage etc. the starting point is to assume50:50 of assets, and then these factors get applied if there are reasons to deviate form that. If he can work, but chooses not to, and you have sufficient shared assets for you both to support yourselves when spilt 50:50 then it will be split like that.

Yes, my XH, who gave up work during our marriage and expected to live off my earnings until death did us part, went after my pension and got a 50% share including what I'd accrued in the years before I met him. I didn't fight it but agreed to his financial demands conditional upon a clean break and an immediate end to the tedious game of Courtrooms and Solicitors. Not having him as an ongoing drain on my income was worth it.

@MarieG10

"I work my arse off 60hrs+per week for 30 years while he plays Xbox, and he ultimately benefits from it if we were to split?L

@TwinkleTwinkleLittleStarFightr yes op that's correct and many men could substitute the Xbox, with shopping and coffee mornings and have the same view as you. The laws were drafted to favour women but occasionally bite us as well given that more are having and keeping a career and the unfairness is becoming slightly more apparent.

A friend of mine (high flyer) got shafted as well. She has a lazy husband (I don't understand why she put up with him) but he did the equivalent of coffee mornings whilst she was out flogging her guts out and then got a huge chunk of the assets as there was a fair amount all generated by her. He argued for a greater share of the cashable assets as he had the greater housing need etc than having her pension

The law is not designed to "favour women" but rather to protect the weaker financial party and to treat marriage as a joint enterprise. As women have levelled up in the workplace across generations we have seen both an increasing expectation that both parties work and also an increasing likelihood that the higher earner is a woman so increasingly this will become more normal.

Admittedly I do think part of the reason that spousal maintenance, Mesher Orders and contact orders of EOW are all falling out of favour is because of the numbers of women who would bear the brunt these days but then that just goes to show the benefits of equality.