Divorcing Doctors or Teachers

1996: The First Wives Club - Wilson

If you are going through the experience of a divorce as either a member of the NHS pension scheme or Teachers pension scheme, be prepared for the process to take a little longer. Both the NHS and Teachers pension schemes are updating their systems which produce the valuation of pension rights that need to be considered in a divorce. This is known as the Cash Equivalent Transfer Value, essentially putting a financial figure on the pension benefits that you accrue.

The reason behind this is the changes that the Government announced in March last year and finally published towards the end of October. The pension administrators naturally want to get this rather important detail right and it has taken some time for systems to be assessed and updated. At the moment expect delays. Indeed if you have already had a CETV statement and it was dated before 26th October 2011 and had a 3 month guarantee and you submitted the request to transfer benefits, then this will be honoured provided the 3-month time-frame has not expired. This means that in practical terms there are about 2 weeks left for anyone that was in this position. If you are one of those, I suggest contacting the relevant pensions agency.

In addition anyone that is moving benefits from one State Employer to another (eg Local Government to Teacher) the same problem will persist. These Public Sector Club transfers are all delayed until the software works to permit the transfers.