Is It Legal For A Pension Policy To Be Changed...

searcher30

will cut a long story short but basically it goes along the following lines.....
man and wife are getting divorce. husband left leaving wife with nothing (she had cashed in on everythign to help him) . he said if he waited till he was 65 and then got married he said he would get a better pension and she would get entitled to something too.
He said anything she had helped him with he would in other words he would help out after . she therefore cashed in on everything another property,she owned her life insurance policy, her mum's gifting of money..

unfortunately on the day of the marriage he abandoned her but on top of it he also changed his pension policy so that she would get nothing at all but he would try to have a claim on her house.

question: is it legal to do this on pension policy? and is there a way around this? can a court put a claim on a pension policy even though it has been changed?

Thanks in advance

dunstonh

Nomination of beneficiary on a pension is just an expression of wish. At the end of the day, the trustees decide who gets the money. Not the policyholder. The nomination can be changed as often as the pension holder likes.

If the wife didnt get a pension sharing order on the pension, then she has no claim to it and the (ex)husband can do what he likes with it.

exil

Isn't the value of the pension included in assets to be divided on divorce?

Tahiti

As far as I am aware, the only way this is illegal is if a pension sharing order (or whetever they are called these days) is officially in place and he is trying to breach that.

Otherwise, nominated beneficiaries are purely an expression of wish, and not legally binding.

CIS

The official way of doing it by way of a pension sharing order, for occupational/private scehemes I beleive its run by HMRC, for the State scheme , its run by State Pension forecasting in Newcastle.