btp pension

If you would like a few ideas as to what would be a reasonable division answer these questions,



Your respective ages;

The number of children you have and their ages;

How many nights the children spend with each parent;

The length of your marriage and any period of pre marriage cohabitation;

Your respective incomes;

Your respective outgoings;

Your assets - both solely held and joint;

Your liabilities

A controversial opinion but heyho, pensions are not liquid assets like those that can be sold for cash as such they are rarely valued pound for pound of a liquid asset, so if a pension is to be offset against a liquid asset often the pension is discounted even as low as 15% of the liquid assets, that said the devil is in the detail and every matter is individual no two cases are the same.

me 45
him 50
children grown and flown
27 years
income me 1400
him 2000 approx
outgoing me500household bills and insuramces
him 1000 car loan credit card and mortgage oh and endowments
assess house equity 200.000
no libilities

How much are the endowments worth and when do they pay out? And how much does a two bedroomed house cost where you live?

from memory
ones is 16.000 ends early next year
other 19.000 got about 5 years left on it
dont think theres much difference between 2 and 3 beds......a 2 bed masionette is about 200.000

Well, applying the principles from the various legal eagles I've come across during the divorce process....

In a previous post you said the mortgage on your house was £70,000 and that the endowments worth 19,000 and 30,000... the difference in the two guesses could make a little difference but maybe not much...

First after a long marriage and with no children still living at home the split moves closer towards remaining at 50/50. The first need of you both is housing... I know you say he is housed with the OW but a court would still expect him to have some money to house himself if necessary. My partner was living with me during the financial side of his divorce but the judge at FDR still insisted he needed money to house himself. So...

I think you would have to sell you current house because on your income you wouldn't be able to pay the mortgage. My guess is a reasonable financial settlement would be:

Sell the house - Value = £260,000, mortgage = £70,000, sale costs = £7,800...therefore equity = £182,200. Based on an assumed annual income of £21,000 (based on your £1400pcm net) the maximum mortgage you could get would be around £50,000 but that would be around £380 a month in repayment, which would be tight on your budget. I think you could argue £30,000 is the most you could comfortably borrow (£230 a month), so you would need £170,000 from the house equity. This would leave him (depending on your guesses re endowments) between £47,200 and £61,200 to invest in property himself.

This is a percentage split of between 73-78% to you, which is high but not impossible. However, you would still be entitled to a pension share and a police pension is well worth sharing, as it is index linked and you would collect it in 15 years when you're 60.

I don't think you would get a 50/50 split because you would be getting so much of the equity (although I could be wrong) but you should still ask for it and be prepared to settle for between 30-40%.

On your income figures I don't think you'd get SM, as the difference between your two incomes isn't wide enough.

This is my best guess... hopefully others like LLM or perrypower will be along to weigh in with their experience.

Boo

The most important thing here is to work out what you need and then go backwards from that to see how it can be achieved with the assets you have. Bear in mind that after a long marriage the start point is 50:50 and you will have to come up with good reasons to depart from that.

As others have said, the pension is a very vaulable asset and almost certainly grossly undervalued by the CETV. This is important and will make a big difference if you either offset (and Dukey is right about the way discounting happens - it is controversial but many DJs work on a 25% figure)or if you are not able to pension share with in his scheme. If you cannot pension share within the scheme you will only get a percentage of the CETV to invest in another pension.

What you need to know is whether the pension scheme he is in allows pension sharing within it on divorce. This is VERY important. If it does, then a pension share may be well worth going for as you will have your own pension in the scheme including a 25% tax free lump sum on retirement. This guaranteed benefit can be used to help pay off any mortgage you need to secure to house yourself adequately.

It may well be worth asking for a statement of benefits for the fund as it stands now (benefits on retirement assuming no more payments are made in). This will give you guidance as the the "true" value. The lump sum that may be taken on retirement is, as I have said, 25% of the gross find value.There would need to be some adjustments for tax but it would give you a ball park figure. (In my case the gross value of the pension was TWICE the CETV - and the CETV was less than 200k - therefore the lump sum was nearly 100k))

Finding this out will give you a clearer idea of what you are potentially giving up if you opt for more equity now instead of a pension share. Remember also you will giving up entitlement to widow's pension which can be valuable.

Get up to date current values for the endowment policies. Signing these over is a painless way of sharing some of the cash assets but as it stands they do appear to account for only around 15% of the available "cash" pot. (equity circa 180, endowments circa 35k)

You also need to find out what size mortgage you could get on your income. It may be as much as 45k+ and you could consider having it on an interest only basis to be paid off by pension lump sum (see above).

Your strict "need" in terms of the 1973 Matrimonial Causes Act sec 25 is for a one bed property. A court may well base decisions on this. They would certainly expect you to be in a property that is affordable ... probably no more than 2 beds.

You need to research suitable alternative properties - look at shared ownership options as well.

Once you have done this research you will be better placed to formulate an offer that works for you and hopefully will help you avoid the expense of court. Do the research yourself - don't expect your solicitor to do it. You will do a better job because you care about it - and getting a solicitor to do it would be very costly.

I hope this makes sense. I really would advise you to make sure you have all the right information before agreeing to anything that could disadvantage you in the future.

Hadenoughnow

... Had is always better at this than me...

The only further comment I canmake is that with the police pension scheme you can only have an internal pension share (very worthwhile - index linked) and this becomes your own seperate pension in every way except one... only one of you (you or your ex) can have the pension lump sum. This may not be the case with other pensions but it is with police pensions, so you can't rely on this to pay off your mortgage, as he will reach pension age first and may take the lump sum first, which would mean you couldn't.