Family Law

Rhys Taylor, 36 Family and 30 Park Place
Jonathan Galbraith, Mathieson Consulting

2020 has thus far proved to be a memorable year for all the wrong reasons, but nonetheless it remains an interesting one in the field of pensions considerations upon divorce. Three recent cases reflect the judicial treatment of the report of the 2019 Pensions Advisory Group—an interdisciplinary judge-led group established to establish a consistent treatment of pensions matters in respect of divorce. These include when and how the apportionment of pension benefits attributable to the marital period is appropriate, pensions tax matters associated with the Lifetime Allowance and the manner in which an ex-spouse may seek to take a retirement income. The use of offsetting in matrimonial cases—distributing non-pension assets in such a manner as to correct an imbalance in pension assets—also poses a number of important valuation issues for practitioners, clients and pension experts alike. This article seeks to provide a flavour of these issues along with details of how some of them have been approached in these recent rulings.

The full article will be published in the December issue of Family Law. 

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