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Divorce and your pension

You and your partner will need to consider how to treat your pension as part of any divorce/dissolution settlement.

You may wish to get legal advice from your solicitor on how to deal with your Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) benefits during any divorce or dissolution of a civil partnership.

There are three main ways of treating your pension benefits during a divorce/dissolution:

• Offsetting: 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: where part of your pension is paid to your ‘ex’ at the point you draw it.
   
• Pension sharing: Where the value of your benefits is split, and part of it used to set up your 'ex' with a completely separate pension pot.

Life cover

As a member of the LGPS you have valuable life cover which includes a lump sum paid on your death. If you have previously nominated your husband, wife or civil partner to receive this, you may want to fill in a new death grant expression of wish nomination form to let us know of any changes.