Logjam in pension pot valuations is ‘causing huge distress’ and costing money for divorcing couples
Rupert JonesSat 19 Oct 2024 05.00 EDTShareCurrent and retired teachers who are getting divorced have said their lives are on hold because of a bureaucratic logjam involving their pensions.
One teacher, Katherine Laird, said she believed she was among “huge numbers” of people who were unable to finalise a divorce while she waited for a valuation from Teachers’ Pensions, with the wait “causing huge distress and also costing money”.
Another, retired teacher Richard Blewitt, 72, said he has had to move into rented accommodation because of the delays, adding: “I am in despair as my debts mount.”
At the heart of the problems is the valuation of people’s pension pots, and changes to the way these are calculated.
When someone is getting divorced, they will typically need to get information on the value of their pension in order to allow the courts to consider whether or not it should be shared with their ex-partner and, if so, how much they should get.
Current and former teachers who are getting divorced have to contact Teachers’ Pensions – which administers the Teachers’ Pension Scheme on behalf of the Department for Education – to request a cash equivalent transfer value (CETV). This shows how much they have built up in the scheme.
Without a transfer value, it is difficult or impossible to reach a financial settlement in a divorce.
The government’s MoneyHelper website says that if you qualify for a CETV, it must be provided within three months of you asking, but some teachers said they have been waiting a year or more, and a few said they had been hanging on for more than 18 months.
Delays seem to have started after changes to the “discount rate” used to work out contribution rates into public sector schemes, according to the former pensions minister Steve Webb, now a partner at the pension consultants LCP.
Things were further complicated by a court judgment that found that government changes to public sector pensions in 2015 fell foul of age discrimination laws.
It really is a messFormer pensions minister Steve Webb“The resolution involves giving people a choice at retirement as to whether they want to be treated as having been in the old scheme or the new scheme between 2015 and 2022. As you can imagine, trying to value this is a bit of a nightmare,” Webb said.
It is unclear precisely how many people are affected, but the Teachers’ Pension Scheme is the country’s second-largest workplace pension scheme – only the NHS scheme is bigger – with about 2.2 million members.
Some experts said this issue was also affecting other public sector workers, including NHS staff and police officers.
Webb said: “It really is a mess. People’s lives really are being put on hold, with no fixed timetable for getting it sorted out.”
Laird, 42, a secondary school teacher who lives near Southend in Essex, is getting divorced and applied for her pension transfer value in May.
“It’s holding up the whole process,” she said. “We can’t reach any kind of financial settlement on the house or anything else because we don’t know what the pensions are worth.”
She found a Facebook group called We Need Our CETV. On there, one member said she had been waiting for her transfer value since May 2023.
Another group member said they had been waiting since November 2023.
Blewitt, who lives in Leicestershire and retired from teaching in 2016 after 41 years, is almost two years into divorce proceedings. He said it was in October last year that his request for a CETV was accepted. “I was expecting it to be done and dusted by Christmas [2023] or January [2024].”
Blewitt, a former primary school teacher with two children, said he cannot obtain a divorce absolute until he is able to show the other side something in writing that states the value of his pension pot.
“My life is on hold – I’m living in a rental property for the first time since qualifying as a teacher in 1974,” he said. “I’m just keeping my head above water. I can’t move on with my life … I can’t receive my financial settlement until the absolute is granted.”
Blewitt said he paid Teachers’ Pensions a fee for the CETV (it is now £242 for retired members), “and all I receive from my anxious inquiries are that they are overwhelmed with similar requests”.
Kelly Parks, the head of family law at Banner Jones Solicitors, said she has had cases where she has needed to adjourn hearings because the pension valuation information is missing.
“This leads to delay and increased costs … It’s especially worse for clients that cannot afford to financially separate until they have a financial resolution and are stuck living in the same home. It leads to added frustration and arguments, and unfair blame in some cases, as it’s beyond the parties’ control, and this can be difficult for the other party to understand, especially if they have easily accessed their private pension details,” she adds.
View image in fullscreenCurrent and former teachers who are getting divorced have to contact Teachers’ Pensions to request a ‘cash equivalent transfer value’. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PALaird showed Guardian Money what appears to be a response to a freedom of information request to Teachers’ Pensions, posted on the Facebook group, which said that as of 28 August this year, there were 2,483 people currently awaiting their CETVs.
There are other reasons – aside from a divorce – why someone might request a cash transfer value, the most obvious being that they want to move over to another scheme, but it is thought that few teachers would choose to give up their defined benefit pension rights.
The Teachers’ Pension Scheme’s members are teachers employed by councils, academies, sixth form colleges, further education colleges and former polytechnics. It has 682,000 active members, 755,000 deferred members (for example, those who have quit teaching and are yet to retire) and 764,000 members receiving pension payments.
The scheme is administered by the outsourcing company Capita, but last year Capita lost the contract to Tata Consultancy Services, which officially takes over in October 2025.
Capita said: “The timeline for processing transfers has been affected by changes in legislation which is required of – and is impacting – all public service pension schemes. We are now processing CETVs for TPS members in line with the remedy when guidance has been provided and are issuing members with the relevant figures as quickly as possible.”
