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Apples or pears: pension offsetting on divorce
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This paper address the 'Cinderella' of financial remedies on divorce; namely the practice of offsetting pensions against non-pension assets and the divergence of approach towards offset valuations. It highlights the sparse case-law on pension offsetting examines text book accounts of different approaches and touches on recent empirical research. The core of the paper is devoted to the invaluable contributions of 14 leading pension experts who shared mock reports and subsequently took part in discussions about their differences of approach towards pension offset valuations based on three simple mock-scenarios - a small middle and bigger money case - as if they were court-appointed experts. The authors analyse the reasons for their differences and highlight some of the key factors to consider when offsetting concluding that there is a pressing need not only for more interdisciplinary discussion between lawyers and pension experts but also for judicial guidance.
The paper questions how such a substantial divergence in approach to offsetting could have continued for so long unchecked by the courts. The authors suggest that there has been a tendency to treat pension offset valuations as...
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