Financial Order: husband can’t access his pension CETV

[evasmith1912]

My divorce was finalised 12 months ago but I can’t progress the financial order because my retired teacher, ex husband says that the Teachers Pension Scheme won’t release his CETV. He says he has requested it multiple times to no avail. Any retired teachers have advice on how to manage this? Do I just have to wait, potentially years to get this sorted or is there something else I could do?

I don’t have a solution but just wanted to say my friend is in a similar position. Her solicitor has told her she can’t finalise anything until her ex has this piece of paper.
Apparently they are reviewing all orders because of a recent judicial ruling and it could a very long time. 😢

Is the administration Capita by any chance?

Yes- Capita. Apparently transitioning to a different administrator, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), later this year.

The McCloud remedy really slowed things down for a few years but I thought that was sorted now.

I work in the field and Capital are truly terrible. I can’t get pensions into payment for our workforce at all

McCloud makes the calculation take longer too

Your ex could try the Ombudsman to light a fire under them

Capita is a total mess. I’m not sure there’s much you can do except note any adverse impact on you.

He is possibly telling the truth, crapita are in all sorts of bother at the moment, they are months behind requests. They took over the civil service pension scheme and it’s a total shit show, people are having to claim hardship loans, losing their homes, there has been at least one suicide due to their incompetence.

it is the truth. THey are being very slow and leaving lots of people exposed financially because of this - no financial order no protection from ex partner running up debts and being held jointly liable. ITs disgraceful

There’s a possibility we could come to an agreement whereby he keeps his pension and I keep the house. If we were to agree this, would we necessarily need the CETV? Could he estimate a figure based on his current pension?

No you always need the CETV

https://schoolsweek.co.uk/teachers-pensions-delays-unacceptable-says-minister/

definitely a known issue - friends who are teachers getting divorced seem to have had long delays getting what they need from Capita

You can estimate a CETV if you know the likely annual pension

• Ages 40–49: Multiple of 12× to 15× annual pension.
• Ages 50–54: Multiple of 15× to 18× annual pension.
• Ages 55–59: Multiple of 18× to 22× annual pension.
• Ages 60+: Multiple of 20× to 24× annual pension (Highest multiple because payments begin almost immediately).

If you are 58 years old and your annual accrued TPS pension is £15,000:
Estimated CETV = £15,000 times 20 = £300,000

This won't stand up legally but will give you a ballpark figure to know roughly where you stand compared to housing equity or other assets.

They’re not doing them at the moment I believe they’re on hold for a while. It’s rubbish I requested mine in August 25 and got it June 26 and even though I had to complain twice I was lucky to get it in the end. I have heard even doing a pension sharing order also takes forever but we haven’t got that far yet

Yes this impacted us.

we elected to proceed with the divorce anyway (and yes apparently the delays are in the years) because my husband’s new girlfriend was pregnant and she wanted to be married before the baby was born.

look at the projections and compare to other pension.

to be honest mine was so small ExH was happy to ignore it.

if you can come to an agreement yourselves you don’t necessarily need the cetv.

if he’s already retired he knows what payments he is getting.

I used to work in the field at a company where we originally outsourced to capita and then they switched to TCS Diligenta and ...oh boy.....you think Capita are bad.....

@GrumpyDriver i can believe it - not sure where all this will end up but the employers are certainly catching the brunt of it. It really showed me how little people know about how their pensions actually work

We have staff who left months ago with no pension. Thanks to Capita. He isn’t lying, it’s a big problem.

I have finally got mine through...spent the last school holiday calling and emailing literally every day...it's taken months and months. STBXH was also public sector and still hasn't had his, it's horrific

I had this problem -TOS are utterly useless - the private pensions produced them straight away.

We agreed an estimate. That worked for us because we didn’t need nitty gritty detail (we split up 12 years before and have both moved on with other partners), and we knew how we were going to split the assets.

Was an estimate enough to complete the D81 and submit it? Did your financial order then go through without issue?

My situation isn’t quite the same but me and ex sat and did our d81 together and simply put values in we were fine with to get to the outcome we wanted, we had agreed 50:50 on house then we keep our own pensions/savings/cars etc. we simply write numbers to confirm that and used estimates /ballparks so it looked equal .

went through unchallenged.