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Thank you to everyone who joined my webinar yesterday on *Navigating Pensions in Divorce*. It was fantastic to see so many thoughtful questions come through, and I hope you found the session useful. I just wanted to share some extra guidance here following the webinar.
So, you’ve decided that pension sharing will be part of your financial agreement. You may have reached the agreement between yourselves, during the amicable negotiation process, via solicitor negotiations and you may have received advice from a Pensions on Divorce Expert (PODE), and they have prepared a report.
I will guide you through the practical steps that your amicable divorce specialist will take you through, right through to the implementation of the pension sharing order.
1. You provide us with your financial disclosure via your amicable dashboard. If you are on our automated or assisted service, you also provide us with details of your agreement via the dashboard. This will include information about the pension that is being shared and the percentage that will be transferred. Please note that a pension sharing order can only include a percentage not a figure. If you are using an amicable negotiation service, you will discuss your agreements with your divorce specialist, and they will include these in your Record of Agreement Form (RAF).
2. Once all the information on the dashboard has been agreed or you have approved your RAF, our drafting team will prepare your consent order documents. The pension sharing order is included in the orders section of the consent order and there is an additional form that is prepared and is annexed to the consent order. This is called a P1 (pension sharing annex).
3. You will need to send the draft P1 form and sometimes the draft consent order as well, to the pension provider. This is to notify them of your intention to proceed with a pension sharing order and for them to check and approve the contents of the P1 form. They are required to respond within 21 days.
4. Once the P1 has been approved by the pension provider and you have both approved all the consent order documents, we send them to you to sign electronically and then send them to court on your behalf. The court processing times are usually between 6-8 weeks.
5. Once your consent order and pension sharing annex have been approved by the court, after 28 days have passed from the approval of the order, you can apply for the final order to conclude the divorce proceedings.
6. It is once your final order has been pronounced that the pension sharing order can be implemented. Your consent order will state who is responsible for sending the order to the pension provider.
It is important to note that the P1 gives the percentage of the CETV that will be transferred on implementation of the pension sharing order. However, you should be aware that the pension provider will re-calculate the CETV at some point between the date of transfer (the later of the final order date or 28 days after the consent order is approved and sealed by the court) and the date they implement the transfer. Therefore, the percentage of the pension that is transferred will be from this later CETV and the sum of money transferred could be different to the amount based on the current CETV. The implementation can only begin once the pension provider has all the required information which will include the approved consent order and pension sharing annex as well as the details of the person receiving the pension share and details of the pension that will accept the pension credit. Once the pension provider has received all this information they have 4 months to implement the pension sharing order.
This may sound like a lot of steps, but your divorce specialist will be on hand to guide you through the process and will let you know what you need to do and when.