Endowment after divorce

Carbonel24

Hi
I separated from my husband twenty years ago and subsequently divorced. We had two endowments policies which I told him at the time of our divorce to arrange the paperwork for me to sign over to him. He didn’t arrange paperwork so nothing happened. The policies were not part of the divorce as we had already sold our house and agreed % split at the time. Now they are reaching they vesting dates he want me to sign these over to him. I have not paid into them but at the time of our house sale I was very low and lost out on an equal % share. Should I just sign these over or do I have any claim on the investment? Thank you

Old_Lifer

If the endowments were jointly owned when they were taken out and nothing was done to change this, the policies will still be jointly owned. Either policyholder can pay the premiums.


Perhaps the Life Office will pay half the proceeds to you and half to your ex.


Someone with recent experience of this may come along with their thoughts on this.

SonOf

Endowment policies are normally included in the settlement and assigned to the beneficiary as part of the agreed settlement. The solicitor would normally take care of that. You often find they fail to did it.

If your ex-spouse has carried on paying the premiums all these years then you have not contributed to it. Did you agreed to split the value it was in the past? Did you get the money via other means back then?

it seems unlikely that the ex-spouse would agree to continue paying into them only to have to pay you half all these years later.

AnotherJoe

When one of our endowments matured we both had to sign the forms and the company sent them back wanting additional ID for MrsAJ because they said her signature was too different to the one she had used 25 years previously.
Point being, they won't just pay out to your ex.
However, morally, since you wanted them signed over to hIm, and he's been paying them for 20 years, what's your argument as to why you won't sign? Are you claiming because you were very low that somehow the mortgage / divorce settlement was unfair? Seems a bit late. More than a bit late.

DoctorStrange

How long did you pay into these endowments? You divorced 20 years ago and he's been paying the premiums since...

I guess if they have been running 25 years and you contributed half for 5 years you've essentially contributed 2.5 years i.e. 10%, but that's maybe a long shot

Old_Lifer

Morally, I would agree with AJ's opinion.


However, I would think that years ago when the policies were worth very little, no one was much interested in doing the paperwork but now with large maturity payouts approaching the OP has suddenly become interested and wants a share.