Background
- Mr R approached us feeling particularly down as a jointly instructed equality of income calculation had provided the results he wanted.
Concerns
- He felt that this was a particularly bad deal for him.
- The pension share would mean he would lose approximately £100,000 of his pensions.
- This meant that from an initial ownership split of 70:30 during the marriage he would end up with only 30% and his ex wife would receive 70%.
What we did
- We reviewed the pension sharing report with our actuarial expert and spotted that the IFA involved had taken a number of short cuts:
§ The second state pensions had not been valued at all.
§ No attempt had been made to independently value the pensions.
§ An assumption was being made that annuity rates would stay the same.
The results
- Based on the figures provided we estimated that £120,000 and hers at £16,000.
- Therefore, the overall pot was being undervalued by approximately £136,000.
- By extrapolating the figures it became clear that the actual deal on the table was more like 52% to his ex wife.
- Our client was able to relax knowing that the deal was not as bad as he first feared.
