firefighters final salary pension

First post and first divorce so forgive my ignorance please. Sadly It looks as though I could be about to be retired on an ill health pension around the same time as my stbx and I discuss terms. We are still getting along well and she has been a great wife and mother so fully deserves a 'fair' settlement. We would like to pool everything together and split it for good, posssibly using collobaration or mediation. Will my ill health status confuse issues greatly? And will the process be costly? My possible ill health pension confuses me.

Hi Mamook

I do not believe that your ill-health pension can be dealt with in the same way as your main pension. By that, I mean that it is not possible to redistribute it by doing a pension sharing or attachment order.

Your unfortunate ill health has other implications when it comes to looking at your main pension. This is because one of the valuable aspects of a fire service pension is the ability to retire from service at a relatively early age and start drawing your pension. I suspect that this will not be an issue if you are granted an ill-health pension as I assume it will payout until you reach the normal retirement age of your main pension.

On a more sombre note, depending on the nature of your ill health, your main pension may have a theoretically lower value if your ill health is likely to mean that your life expectancy is lower. This is important in terms of how you structure any settlement and is a factor that should be considered if a pension sharing order is a possibility.

Sorry to be so gloomy, but I suggest that it is better to be up-front about the issues if it means avoiding mistakes.

I hope this helps, do post again if you need more information or clarification. If I can help and you prefer not to put private information on the public forum, please feel free to send me a Private Message.

Peter

The ill health pensionshoul not prevent you using Collaborative Law or mediation. One of the advantages of using the Collaborative process is that you can (where needed) involve a 'Financial Neutral' - someone who can give joint information and advice about the finacial issues, and the options for spilling them - this can be very useful to make sure that you are both fully aware of any pitfalls, tax implications etc early enough to take them into account in deciding what the best way to split assets is. which in this case might be helpful to look at the options as to how your pension(s) should be treated.

In my experience, using a Collaborative process is no more (and can be less) expensive than a more 'traditional' route,and has the huge benefots taht it is geared towards you and your ex-partenr ending up with something you both agree is fair, so you can often be a bit more flexible or creative than a court would be.

I think it is likely that you will need specialist advice about the pension, and how to deal with pension sharing - As Peter says, your health will impact the pension as it could mean you recieved lower payments (becasue it has been paid early) or higher one s if you are judged to have 'imparied life' and a lower life expectancy. You wife may be entiled to a pension share but not able to draw it for a number of years, so you will need to consider what income you will each have in the mean time, and whether any adjustments to take account of that difference is need.

You will also need to consider issues such as your respective housing needs (do your health problems mean you will have any special needs when it comes to housing?) and mortgage capacities.

Your health will also be relevent to this issue - do your helth probalems mean you are not able to work at all, or "just" that you can't work as a firefighter? If the latter, you'll need to consider what other work you might be able to do and how that impacts your earning/mortgage capacity.

It's great that you an your wife are dealing with this amicably and want to continue to do so - personally, I would suggest you try Collaboration rather than mediation as I think you will both benefot from all of the dicsussions, especially about the more complex finacial issues, being carried out with your solicitors and any finacial advisor being directly involved.

Do keep us posted

Peter,Bagpuss, feel free to be as sombre and honest as you wish. Kid gloves are of little use in this instance.
The marriage is 21 years, my career is 22 years into a possible 37 term. I will leave with either a 24/60th or 31/60th pension if retired on ill health dependant on capability to fulfil average of 30 hours or more in a 'normal' job. My condition is Temporal lobe epilepsy, medically intracticable. My current salary is approx 32k. If my calcs are right this will produce either £12800 pa at 24/60th commutating a quarter x19 = £60800 & £9600 pa or £16533 pa at 31/60ths commutating a quarter x19 = £78531 & £12400. This will be payable immediately, till my death. My wife (both 41) has a pension from M&S full time work of approx 12 years and 10 years part time first direct pension. She still works 31 hours per week at first Direct.
We have two boys in full time education and live in a 4 bedroom house with approx £110k equity. No savings to speak of.
Would an IFA be a better option for us?
How does all that look?

Mamook

On the assumption that your epilepsy is so called idiopathic (not caused by an injury or lesion), then it will not affect the value of your pension.

Personally, I feel that the idea of consulting an IFA is a very good one, with one proviso, that the IFA has appropriate experience in divorce cases – preferably as a Resolution Accredited IFA. If you accept the recommendation of TBagpuss and consider the Collaborative process, the Collaborative lawyers will know of properly accredited IFAs and will involve them in the process.

To find a Collaborative lawyer you can go to the Resolution web site www.resolution.org.uk/find_a_collaborative_lawyer/ . I believe that you effectively only need to find one as they can suggest the other lawyer to consider, TBagpuss will correct me if I am wrong about this.

Peter

Peter,
My TLE has been caused by a cavernoma ,a benign tumour for want of a better description. I had it surgically removed which was a lot of fun as you can imagine. TLE is very complicated and seizure control is only part of the problem, I struggle psychologically a great deal but I'm not sure that's relevant. Is it from a life expectancy angle you are approaching my case?