Pension issue now!

[cm0301]

So after waiting what feels like forever to get conditional order, and then forever again to get NHS Pension CETV my ex is now saying that his solicitor says we must get an Actuarial Assessment of my Phase 1 pension (1995/2008 scheme) in order to sanction a financial order and that a judge will throw it back at us without this being done. First I've heard of anything like that as a MUST do. Going to ask my solicitor but wondered if any of that makes any sense to anyone on here! Also makes me question whether I then need to do the same with all of his - he has like 8 different pensions?! This feels never-ending! Thanks!

If yours is a state / civil service/ teacher etc pension that's probably true ..

I totally feel your pain, I waited 11 months for my NHS CETV to allow us to start our consent order.
We did complete the consent order - the D81 form with our respective CETV without any further details and the order was granted so it is not a MUST.
However not every divorce is the same and if your partner is requesting more detail in the financial order to allow finer splitting of the assets this is allowed as pension vs cash/equity pound for pound is not necessarily equal.

Could you suggest your ex merge all of his pensions into one pot so you are both then able to understand if there are any pension discrepancies in amounts? My pension provider did this very easily and it saved a lot of faffing about. This is assuming your are both being calm and reasonable!

OK, so I had a defined benefit pension, but didn't need to get a full actuarial evaluation (which is very expensive and can take a long time). We just used the CETV values of both our pensions. Which seems entirely fair to me. Judge never mentioned it and settlement all went through first time.

Edit: This was 2 years ago

Thanks all. We were supposed to be taking a calm and reasonable approach via mediation but since he got a solicitor tone has definitely changed. He has been convinced for years about how much "better" my pension is than his, so this has clearly triggered all that and things are definitely feeling a lot less amiable unfortunately.

I had this experience too. Instead of working together to discuss and reach a fair settlement, my ex chose to do things through the solicitor, and both our solicitors seemed to have wildly different ideas about what was reasonable. It turned what should have been an amicable separation into mistrust and animosity which still persists over two years down the line.