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.