Pensions can be one of the most valuable assets – but the are also the one that most people don’t have a clue about how much it is worth -or what company might be holding it.
Pensions are funny assets. They are ‘locked’ for the future (over 55 years of age) with tax benefits and they can sometimes be worth far more than they seem to be.
In any case dealing with finances on divorce, the value of any pension has to be found. The starting point is to consider the type of pension and the ‘Cash Equivalent’ value of the pension – shortened all the time to the ‘CE value’.
But what if you don’t know what that is or you can’t find who has the pension now? It’s not as hard as you think if you follow these easy steps:
- Contact the pension company that you think it is with – either by phone or letter. Tell them you are getting divorced and you need information about the pension, They will now exactly what you are asking about.
- If you can’t remember the name of the pension company but you got it through a past employer, contact your past employer to ask for details of who is looking after the pension.
- If you still can’t find out, you can use the government Pension Tracing Service. It won’t tell you if you have a pension or how much it is worth but it will tell you who is looking after the pension fund now so you can ask them. The link is here
- If you want to find out how much your State Pension is worth, again you can use the government website and the link is here
If you are not sure what to do about pensions and whether you should be sharing pensions when you get divorced, I can help. Contact me!
See also: https://dovastonlaw.co.uk/divorced-women-pensions-poor/
and: https://dovastonlaw.co.uk/pensions-bit-difficult-arent/