How to get Pension Value for Divorce

[Dave0r]

Good Morning,

This one might be a bit different, and I can't find any other posts like it in this forum...

My parent's are going through a divorce, it's currently been 2 years and 3 months since we started proceedings and we are still no further along.

My Dad works in FT in RM, and I believe he has done so since around 1987, we have been waiting for 2 years now for him to be able to say "my pension is X" so that we can finally go through to court and separate the assets. He has consistently maintained that he does not know how much his pension is and knows of no way that he can access the information.

At this point, I'll quickly explain that my dad is awful, an alcoholic & a narcissist with anger issues, nobody including his own children want anything to do with him, he had a 30 year affair, kept all the money in his name solely, hid details of his private pensions (that we proved the existence of in the initial court date), has changed the locks on the marital home that is jointly owned so my Mum is now having to live with me and my family for the past year because she now has nothing - she did school hours all of her life and so has not got a huge pension to fall back on, and all their savings are in his name.The last time he saw me, he strangled me, he was angry that I dared to ask for a key to the home for my Mum to get some of her things, the police got involved but luckily I had recorded the whole interaction and they agreed that the minute he opened the door he was looking for somebody to hit.

So, you can see why we might not be very trusting of "not knowing how much or where his pension is" as a statement from him.

We have employed a specialist company that find pension details and creates a report for the court on what a 50/50 split should be, but again, he has told them he has no idea where to find details of the RM pensions and so the whole report is stuck.

Does this ring true? Is it the case that Thousands of you have no idea what your pensions will be at retirement?

We've got to the point where we are just considering going to court and just saying "Let him keep the pension, please rule that in lieu of his pension Mum gets 100% of the house and 50% of the savings they built together" - but we don't want to do that if the pension makes more sense? The house is worth about £380k - my Mum is 63 and Dad is 64.

Does anyone have any information on how to get an illustration of pension income?

[RobertT]

Your fathers RM pension provision is probably split between the RM Statutory Pension Scheme(up to 2012) and RM Pension Plan(2012+).
Although the RM Defined Contribution Plan could be involved too, if he's already taken all RMSPS and RMPP benefits, or else opted out of them.

It would be very easy for your father to find out the value of his RM pensions, if he wanted to. Whether a third party could do it instead, I don't know.

This is what the RMPP website says:

Getting divorced

Dividing your pension benefits with a former partner
If you get divorced or dissolve a civil partnership, the courts need to decide how to divide your assets between you and your former spouse or civil partner. When they do this, they’ll take the value of all your pension benefits into account (including those held in the RMSPS).
How do the courts divide pension benefits?

For divorce proceedings that started on or after 1 October 2000, the courts can apply a process called pension sharing. 
With pension sharing, the courts split the value of your pension benefits between you and your former spouse or civil partner upfront. Your former partner will need to move their share of the benefits to another pension arrangement. And the value of your benefits will be reduced to reflect this.

It means you don’t have to wait until you’ve started taking your benefits to split them.
The courts can apply pension sharing even if you’ve started taking your pension benefits.

How do I get details of my pension benefits for divorce proceedings?

If you’re getting divorced, please get in touch with the Pensions Service Centre (contact details below). You’ll need to ask them for details of your pension benefits in writing. When you write to them, please quote:

Your member number or National Insurance number
Your date of birth

https://www.royalmailsps.co.uk/
https://www.royalmailpensionplan.co.uk/
https://www.scottishwidows.co.uk/save/r ... cplan.html

[Dave0r]

Thank you so much, whenever his solicitor trotts out this excuse we were always thinking "surely thats class action lawsuit material? If thousands have no idea of what they will be living on come retirement" - for the past 2 years it's not sat right.

If you don't mind I'll send the content of this thread to my Mums solicitor, who can pass it to his, then when we come to the court date, we can show that he's been acting in bad faith this entire time and jsut get it split.

Thanks again :)

[RobertT]

Every RM employee(and former employee) who's in one of the pension schemes, should get an annual illustration telling them how much they'll get when the time comes.

If the pension has already been taken, I think notices are usually sent out prior to the new tax year saying how much benefits will increase by(due to inflation).

As he's 64, he's probably already taken his Age60 benefits, which is what he accrued up to 2010 – there's no benefit in not taking them at 60!
He may have already taken his Age65 too, which relates to 2010 to the present.

If he's taken both or chosen to opt out, he may well have since been enrolled into the RMDCP.

The quote I provided about dividing a pension on divorce, is on the RMPP website for all to see: https://www.royalmailpensionplan.co.uk/ ... -divorced/

I hope it all works out.

[mags999]

A

[Dave0r]

Thanks for the figures, still trying to work out which is best, try to claim 100% of house or keep going on with the pension - I have written instructions to our solicitors, to inform his solicitor that we expect to see some evidence that he has written to the addresses mentioned above, and the replies where they tell him it's impossible to know what he will receive at 65. Hopefully with that in the system, when we do finally come to court, we can call him out on all the BS he's put us through, and maybe claim back court fee's for wasted time.

Your figures are interesting though, he still uses the joint account because he doesn't think my Mum knows how to access it, so I know that at the moment he's getting £975 a month from RM-State Pension, so roughly £10,500 per year?

[mags999]

I

[heapsy]

Thanks for the figures, still trying to work out which is best, try to claim 100% of house or keep going on with the pension - I have written instructions to our solicitors, to inform his solicitor that we expect to see some evidence that he has written to the addresses mentioned above, and the replies where they tell him it's impossible to know what he will receive at 65. Hopefully with that in the system, when we do finally come to court, we can call him out on all the BS he's put us through, and maybe claim back court fee's for wasted time.

Your figures are interesting though, he still uses the joint account because he doesn't think my Mum knows how to access it, so I know that at the moment he's getting £975 a month from RM-State Pension, so roughly £10,500 per year?

By law his solicitors have to provide the information. I had to do just the same when I got divorced more than 20 years ago. Don't take any crap from him or them.

[Dave0r]

Thanks all,

I'm going to talk to my Mums soilicitor today, I rang the number on the pensions website yesterday, and the helpful guy on the other end explained that every employee gets two statements a year regarding the value of their pensions, and all he need do to get the ball rolling is to ring that same number, with his name, d.o.b and RM/N.ID in order to get the figures we need to finish this horrible & expensive purgatory he's put my Mum through the last 26 months.

I've explained over email to the solicitor everything I've found, and I'm going to pursue getting a court order to get these documents as it now seems very apparent that my dad will not.

The only bright bit of this is that the courts tend to look very dimly on people who don't supply full details of their finances, and given that we've already had to prove that he had a second private pension already, he failed to turn up to our original FDR hearing, has forced us to adjourn the 3 subsequent FDR hearings as we don't have all the financial info from his side and now a court order to get these final details, the Judge will 'likely' take the costs of all these things out of his side of the house or savings

Thank you again for all your help

[Dave0r]

I'm just updating this as it feels nice to actually be able to close this thread off

We are finally almost through now, it was 5 years since we started on this journey last september

We ended up having to pay a Pension Actuar £4k & court also needed 12k (split) in order for us to finally track down the missing pension information.

We are finally at the point when royal mail are preparing to split the pension, but they want £1800 to do so, my father point blank said no, by not paying it he keeps the assets, court means another lot of costs to force him to pay even his half by court order., meaning Mum will have to pay this.

So bitter sweet ending I guess, although we are finally free of him, my mum has her own house on my road and grandchildren to play with, Royal Mail is taking £1800 which seems unfair, the costs will be recouped once the penision finally hits, but no other pension (private) provider has cost anywhere near this much for an administration task.

Thanks for your help all those years ago!

[Hyrrokkin]

Glad your mum & you have finally some light at the end of the tunnel and can move on.

The costs will burn a little but after reading your posts i think a small price to pay to be free and done.