Background
Mr R approached us feeling particularly down as a jointly instructed equality of income calculation had not 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.
