When a marriage or civil partnership breaks up

Here are the options for taking the value of your pension benefits into account:

Offsetting
This is where the value of your benefits is offset against other assets. So to take a simple example, you might keep your £60,000 worth of pension benefits, but your ‘ex’ would keep the £60,000 house.

Earmarking
This is where part of your pension is paid to your ‘ex’ at the point you draw it.

Pension sharing
This option is only open to you if court proceedings began on or after 1 December 2000. Pension sharing means the court can order us to split the value of your benefits at the time of divorce, and use part of it to set up your ‘ex’ with a completely separate pension ‘pot’. Here’s how it works.

The court decides if and how your benefits are to be split. For example, if they decide a 60/40 split, this means you lose 40% of your benefits - this is known as a pension debit.

We work out the current value of this pension debit, by looking at your pay and your membership so far, and note this on your pension records.

We then carry the debit forward, until the time you draw your benefits. We then apply the debit, first updating it, by increasing it in line with the retail price index. Under a pension sharing order, your 'ex' becomes the credit member.

Credit member's options
Click here for an example

And remember, other benefits could be affected too, such as a survivors’ pension if you tie the knot again.

Topping up your benefits
If your pension is shared, you may want to think about topping up your benefits in some way, to make up for the pension debit.

More about topping up benefits in general

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