Calculate CETV - anyone here know how to do that?

[Movingonup313]

Does anyone here have experience of calculating this? If I can pull my and my employers pension contributions from date of marriage to date of separation - what calculation is applied to get the cetv? Pension administrator would usually provide this information. Ive been waiting 5 months. They have a backlog of 86000 requests. Terrible situation and I need the calculation so that I can get divorced from a horrible man and move on.

If the scheme is the Civil Service Defined Benefit scheme (getting a lot of coverage about their backlog of 86,000 bits of work outstanding) then no-one but them will be able to help you I’m afraid. Calculating a CETV is scheme specific. However please make sure your solicitor is truly qualified to guide you in this area - the last I had any dealings with CSPS the CETV cannot be split in terms of the CETV itself - the ex-spouse (in my previous client case) had to become a shadow scheme member. Sorry this might not be the news you are hoping for but the actual contributions paid to the scheme (whether defined benefit or defined contribution) is not relevant for financial settlement calcs.

What the first poster said.

Are you going to split your pension with him 50/50? That's the biggest decision.

If only trying to work out period of marriage the OP is maybe in Scotland so even agreeing 50/50 doesn’t probably work that well but IMO the CETV is not helpful if there is no actual CETV available for transfer.

Agree with other posters, in a defined benefit scheme CETV is nothing to do with contributions instead needs scheme rules, years of service, salary at various points etc. an independent actuary is the only person who would be able to assist (other than the scheme itself)

You cannot calculate a CETV yourself.

It is the estimated capital value of your Defined Benefit pension, i.e. an estimate of someone saying "what amount of money would someone need to have today to be able to provide you with the pension that's been promised to you?" To estimate that requires assumptions about (for example) how long you will live in retirement, and what investment returns will be. The longer you live the more money is needed now; the higher investment returns will be the LESS money you need now.

Those assumptions will be set by the Scheme Actuary, and the CETV calculated by the pensions administration team using the Actuary's methodology.

Often a CETV will end up being 15-20 times the amount of your annual pension (so a £1,000pa pension might have a CETV of £15,000 to £20,000) but the value is highly dependent on both your own scheme benefits and the assumptions used, so it can easily be more or less than that. Trying to estimate it yourself is no good because a Court will not use your own estimate, they will want to see an official one.

Annoying though it is (and speaking as a divorcee here myself) you will just have to wait for that official value. The only other option is to agree with your other half that you will leave pensions out of the divorce settlement ... which what me and my ex-wife did: OK if you both have similar pensions and that's fair (we both work in financial services and so have a very good idea of the relative values), but pensions can be the most valuable thing people have so if you're not sure of their values it's better to include them.

Thank you everyone. This is very helpful. I had no idea what was involved in the calculation. I appreciate the detailed replies. (Yes, I am in Scotland and yes affected by the publicised backlog of 86000. )