Latest news and analysis from The Lawyer Please Select Human Rights Local Government Civil Procedure Personal Injury Previous page Financial break-up On 1 December a new law comes into place enforcing the sharing of pensions between divorcing couples. According to newspaper reports last week, the rich and unhappily married are beating a path to lawyers' doors in the hope of being able to push a divorce through before 1 December. This is when the new provisions relating to pension sharing, as contained in the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 amended by the Welfare Reform and Pensions Act 1999, come into force. The new legislation represents a major social change and overrides existing pension scheme rules and trust deeds. It requires pension providers to incorporate sharing provisions into the rules of existing approved schemes when those rules are next updated.
New schemes seeking approval have to include the pension sharing provisions.
The new legislation requires the pension provider to disclose specified information on request and within a specified time limit. For the ex-spouse, pension sharing is likely to provide a much fairer, tidier and more certain result than earmarking. Pension sharing will supplement but not replace earmarking, which was introduced by the Pensions Act 1995. But for all divorce petitions issued on or after 1 December 2000, a pension sharing order is likely to be the more attractive option to the applicant, although perhaps not to the respondent of a claim for ancillary relief. In England and Wales it will be necessary to have a court order to achieve pension sharing.