Pension sharing is where your pension is shared with your former partner due to a divorce or dissolution of a civil partnership.
If you share your pension with your former partner, they’ll become a pension credit member. They’ll hold pension credit benefits in the NHS Pension Scheme in their own right.
This will reduce your pension benefits. This will also reduce the pension payable on your death to any future partner.
A cash equivalent transfer value (CETV) is used by the courts to decide if or how a pension should be shared.
The court will provide a pension sharing order to specify how the pension must be shared.
English, Welsh, and Northern Irish court orders will specify a percentage. A Scottish court order will be a specific monetary value.
Implementing a pension sharing order
If you’re a member of multiple NHS Pension Schemes, the pension sharing annex must specify which Scheme is to be shared.
If more than one Scheme is to be shared, an annex must be provided for each one.
An annex naming the 1995/2008 Scheme shares benefits in both the 1995 Section and the 2008 Section of the Scheme.
An annex naming the 2015 Scheme shares benefits in this Scheme only.
The court order provided must be supplied by an English, Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish court.
The effective date is the latest date of either:
- the decree absolute or dissolution order
- 28 days after the court order was made
We must receive the:
- completed PD3 pension sharing order confirmation form which is available on our website
- decree absolute, Final Order or dissolution order
- final pension sharing consent order including a pension sharing annex or Qualifying Agreement pertaining to the order
- full names and National Insurance (NI) numbers of the Scheme member and former spouse or civil partner including any maiden names
- payment for implementing the order
If your pension sharing order or qualifying agreement was made in Scotland, you must provide us with the documents listed within 2 months of the date of the extract of the decree or the order or Agreement is deemed to have never taken effect.
You can view the fee for implementing the pension sharing order in the schedule of charges on our website. The fee remains the same where one or both Schemes are being shared.
We have 4 months to implement a sharing order once we receive all the information we need. This is known as the implementation period.
Both the member and the former partner will receive a notice of discharge of liability. This confirms the order has been implemented.
A pension sharing order may be varied with a Variation Order from the Courts. Contact your solicitor about this as there are strict time limits. If a Variation Order is made, there’s a charge to implement this.
Pension sharing order implemented before retirement
The amount deducted from your benefits at retirement will be more than the deductions you were told when the pension share was implemented.
This is because the deductions will be increased at your retirement in line with cost of living increases.
Your former partner’s pension credit benefits will also be increased in line with cost of living increases. They’ll receive a higher amount than originally quoted at the implementation stage.
Pension sharing order implemented after retirement
Your pension will be reduced by the amount allocated to your former partner. This will be backdated to the effective date of the pension sharing order.
We aim to reduce your benefits within 6 weeks of receiving all the information needed to implement the pension sharing order.
Any overpayment of pension will be recovered.