Pension claim by ex.

I am a civil servant of 24 years service. I married about 13 years into that service and have approx 12-16 years service left. My soon to be ex wife wants to claim upon my pension, if I don''t give her this and that. She is a member of a money purchase scheme with a blue chip company and has 7 years service and about 15K built up with about 25 years service left till retirement. She will enjoy increases in incremental salary even if no promotion. We have two kids and both work full time. How much could she claim in % terms.
Thank you

Hiya,

There''s soooooooo much more to it than simply how much can shae claim. For example if you have a house with equity, how much she earns compared to you, dependent children, savings. But I was advised that I could potentially claim 50% of our time together. My x is forces with 22 years contributions, we were married 15 years therefore 7.5 of his years went into the pot. I wasn''t awarded them because we had a house with 30k equity in and we are both fairly young (40)I did use them as a bargaining tool though.

xx

Is the pension the only asset you have?

Usually all assets and all debts/liabilities are considered when divvying up the marital pot - many other things are taken into consideration: your ages, your incomes, if you have children etc. etc.

Whilst pensions are part of this, they shouldn''t be looked at in isolation.

What I think the PP refers to is that other things can be used as a bargaining tool for example:

Wife: I need a home to house the kids, so i would prefer to keep £x as housing equity, but will not make a claim on your £x pension.

Its hard to advise on one thing alone.

Also the Courts look at ''needs'' rather than ''What am I entitled to'' - with the childrens needs being considered as a priority.

WR

Thanks, that was useful and gives me an idea of how the trade off may look!