Pension sharing on divorce: how public service pensions are split

Educational, not advice. This article explains the mechanics of how public service pensions are dealt with on divorce. It is general information. It is not legal advice, and it is not financial advice. Pension Plain is not authorised or regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Decisions about a settlement are for you, your solicitor and, where the sums warrant it, an actuary. Nothing here tells you which route to take or what a fair division would be.

Scope: This covers occupational public service pensions: the NHS, Teachers’, Civil Service, Armed Forces, Police, Firefighters’ and Local Government schemes. It explains the routes a court can take, how the value is calculated, what happens to the share afterwards, and how the McCloud remedy affects orders. It does not cover the State Pension, which works on an entirely different basis; gov.uk is the authority on that. It does not cover private or workplace defined contribution pensions, and it is not a guide to divorce law.

For most public service workers, the pension is the second most valuable thing they own, and quite often the first. It is also the asset people understand least well at exactly the moment they need to understand it.

Pension Plain has published sixty-four articles and never one on this. That is a gap worth closing, because the public service version of the question is harder than the private sector one, and most of what you find online is written for private pensions.

The three routes

A pension sharing order splits the pension there and then. The Armed Forces scheme’s own guidance describes the mechanism plainly:

the court will award a percentage (a monetary amount can be specified in Scotland) of one party’s pension value to the other person. The award to the ex-spouse/partner is known as a pension credit and they become a Pension Credit Member. The amount deducted from the pension scheme member is known as a pension debit and they are referred to as Pension Debit Member.

Armed Forces Pension Scheme, 2015 Pension Remedy Divorce Information Note

An attachment order, still often called earmarking, does not split anything. It directs part of the pension to the ex-spouse when it eventually comes into payment. The Firefighters’ scheme guidance sets out why this fell out of favour: it means the former spouse “may always be financially linked to, and dependent on, the scheme member” and “does not offer a ‘clean break’ solution”. There is a further catch, in the same document: an earmarked entitlement “would cease… if the former spouse or civil partner enters into a subsequent marriage or civil partnership.”

Offsetting leaves the pension alone and rebalances other assets instead. The LGPS describes it as keeping “your pension while your ex-spouse gets a larger share of your house.” It is the simplest to administer and the hardest to get right, because it requires putting a present-day cash value on an income that starts decades later.

Scotland counts a different number

This is the first place a general guide will mislead you, and the difference is not small.

For divorce or dissolution of civil partnership under Scots Law, only membership relating to the period of marriage or civil partnership, i.e. date of marriage or date of civil partnership to date of separation, will be used in calculating the CETV. In divorce or dissolution of civil partnership under the law of England and Wales membership relating to the whole period, from the date of joining the pension scheme to the date of the actual calculation, is used.

Scottish Public Pensions Agency, Pensions on Divorce, 1 April 2026

The statutory basis is the Family Law (Scotland) Act 1985, which treats only the marriage-period portion of a pension as matrimonial property. For someone with thirty years’ service who was married for ten of them, the two jurisdictions produce very different starting figures from identical facts.

Scotland also requires a court order or Minute of Agreement to be “registered in the Books of Council and Session before it can be implemented”.

The valuation, and why it takes so long

The figure everything turns on is the Cash Equivalent Value. The Armed Forces guidance is useful on the terminology, because two names circulate:

This is the cash value placed on your pension benefits and is used by the court to determine the pension sharing order. It is sometimes referred to as a Cash Equivalent Transfer Value (CETV) but this term is only valid when pension benefits are not in payment.

Armed Forces Pension Scheme Divorce Information Note, defining Cash Equivalent Value

For unfunded schemes there is no pot of money to value, so the figure is constructed. The Scottish agency spells out why: because the schemes are “unfunded public sector schemes backed by the Treasury we use a set of factorial tables and formulas supplied by the Government Actuary’s Department (GAD) to calculate the CETV or PETV to provide an estimate of what would be available for sharing if a fund existed.”

That phrase, “if a fund existed”, is worth sitting with. The number a court divides is an actuarial construction, not a balance.

On timing, expect months rather than weeks. NHS Pensions says it will “process your request within 3 months of receipt”, with a faster six-week option for active or deferred members for a fee. The Scottish agency warns the process “can therefore take up to three months to complete” because it needs information from employers and HMRC.

What it costs

A valuation is normally free once. The Firefighters’ guidance states it “must normally be supplied free of charge if the information or valuation has not already been provided within the previous 12 months.” Ask twice inside a year and you pay.

Implementing an order costs more, and schemes may recover their reasonable costs. Most publish a schedule of charges rather than a single figure, and the amounts differ by scheme and by whether the case is treated as standard or complex, so the only reliable answer is your own scheme’s current schedule.

One published figure gives a sense of scale. The Scottish agency’s charge for implementing a pension sharing order, effective from 1 April 2026, is £2,620 plus VAT. NHS Pensions requires “full payment for all costs on the Schedule of Charges before we start to implement the order”, unless the court order says otherwise, in which case the cost is recovered later.

The four-month clock, and the Scottish trap

Once an order takes effect, the scheme has a statutory window to implement it. The Armed Forces guidance sets it out: implementation should take place “within a four-month period beginning on the later of: the date of the transfer day [or] the date the scheme administrator receives the relevant pension sharing information”, under section 34(1) of the Welfare Reform and Pensions Act 1999.

Teachers’ Pensions describes the trigger the same way: the order is effective 28 days after it is made, or the date of decree absolute, whichever is later, and the scheme then has four months.

Scotland adds a consequence that has no equivalent in England and Wales, and it is severe. The scheme must receive the required information within two months of the divorce decree or dissolution order, “as laid down in Section 28(7) of The Welfare Reform and Pensions Act 1999… or ‘the Order is deemed never to have taken effect’.”

An order that never took effect is not a delayed order. It is nothing.

The share cannot leave the scheme, unless you are in the LGPS

This is the most important structural feature of public service divorce. It is also the one general guidance gets wrong most often, because that guidance is written for private pensions, where a transfer out is routine.

The Firefighters’ guidance gives the clearest statement of the rule and the reason for it:

Some pension schemes require or allow the former spouse or civil partner to transfer the pension credit to an alternative pension arrangement, some offer membership of the pension scheme from which the pension credit is derived. In the case of the FPS and NFPS, because they are not funded pension schemes in the normal sense, a transfer of pension rights is not allowed. All former spouses and civil partners who are entitled to a pension credit as a result of a pension sharing order will become ‘pension credit members’ of the FPS or NFPS.

Firefighters’ Pension Scheme Divorce Guide

The same pattern holds across the unfunded schemes:

• Teachers’: a pension credit member “is not allowed to transfer their share out of the Scheme or transfer into it and they cannot add flexibilities to boost this type of pension.”
• Civil Service: “You will be put into the same pension scheme as your former spouse/civil partner.”
• Police: the scheme’s own members’ guide defines a pension credit member as an ex-spouse who “will receive a police pension at age 60 (in PPS) or 65 (in NPPS).” A police pension, from the police scheme.
• NHS: the ex-partner holds “pension credit benefits in the NHS Pension Scheme in their own right.”
• Scotland (NHS and Teachers’): “The pension payable to the credit member will remain within the relevant SPPA scheme as it is non-transferable.”

The Local Government Pension Scheme is the exception, and the reason is structural. The LGPS is funded. It holds real assets in real funds. That makes a transfer out possible in a way it is not for a scheme paid from current taxation, so an LGPS pension credit can generally be moved to another qualifying arrangement.

For an ex-spouse in an unfunded scheme, the practical consequence is this. You become a member of a scheme you never worked for, on that scheme’s terms, payable at that scheme’s pension age, with no way to consolidate it elsewhere and no way to add to it. One small mercy for police cases: the guide confirms that “Pension credit benefits under pension sharing on divorce cannot be abated”, so returning to work does not reduce them.

McCloud has reopened settled orders

If your order predates October 2023, this section is the reason to read on.

The McCloud remedy moved members’ service for 1 April 2015 to 31 March 2022 back into their legacy schemes. That changed what their benefits are worth. Which means it changed what any cash equivalent value calculated during that window was worth, and therefore what any share calculated from one was worth.

Every scheme now has Government Actuary’s Department guidance dealing with this, split between prospective cases and retrospective ones. The retrospective guidance catches an order where, in GAD’s own definition, “The PSO transfer day is before 1 October 2023, and The PSO covers remediable service (which always falls into the remedy period 1 April 2015 to 31 March 2022).”

The retrospective guidance was issued scheme by scheme through 2025: Civil Service in July, Firefighters in July, Police in August, Teachers’ in September, NHS in October.

What that means in practice

The Armed Forces scheme has been the most candid about the operational reality. What follows describes a live problem, not a policy:

Currently it is not possible to apply a pension debit to a remedy member where a Pension Sharing Order was implemented in the remedy period and the Pension Sharing Order relates to both legacy and reformed schemes or reformed scheme only… legacy benefits will be paid without applying a Pension Debit. Members should note this will result in an overpayment of pension benefits which will be subject to recovery, those affected will be advised of this when drawing their benefits.

Armed Forces Pension Scheme Divorce Information Note

Read that carefully if it applies to you. It says some members are currently being paid a pension that has not had their ex-spouse’s share deducted from it, and that the difference will be recovered later.

The same document reports that valuations were suspended entirely for two months this year after the SCAPE discount rate change forced GAD to revise its factors: “we have been unable to process CEV applications since 19 May 2026. As of 23 July 2026, we have now resumed processing CEV applications that have accumulated in order of date received.” New requests are “currently taking up to 3 months to process”, and there is no published timescale for revaluing debits.

One more line from it that matters if you are on the receiving end of an order rather than the paying end: the scheme is “unable to provide ex-spouses with updates on the process of CEV requests due to data protection regulations. This is limited to the relevant scheme member only.” The person waiting for the money cannot ask how it is going. Only the member can.

The LGPS position, which is more reassuring

The LGPS gives the plainest member-facing account of what recalculation actually produces, and for most people the answer is nothing:

For many members, the pension they built up in the career average scheme is higher than the pension they would have built up in the final salary scheme. This means that, for most members, the value of their pension on the date of the pension share will not change and the pension share awarded to their former spouse or civil partner will not increase.

LGPS member site

Where it does change, the scheme says the credit is increased and “You will be paid arrears of payments from the date your pension credit was first paid, plus interest.”

FAQ

Pension Plain’s take

The single most useful thing to understand about public service pensions and divorce is that the share cannot go anywhere. In the private sector, a pension share is portable: the money moves, the recipient chooses where. In the NHS, Teachers’, Civil Service, Armed Forces, Police and Firefighters’ schemes, it does not move at all. Your ex-spouse joins your scheme.

That is not a small administrative detail. It shapes what a pension share is actually worth to the person receiving it, and it is precisely the point that generic online guidance, written for private pensions, gets wrong.

The other point is timing. Between three-month valuation queues, a four-month implementation window, a two-month Scottish deadline that can void an order outright, and a McCloud recalculation programme with no published end date, the pension is often the slowest moving part of a divorce. Anyone planning around it should assume it takes longer than everything else, because on the schemes’ own published figures, it does.

Information, not advice. This article describes how public service pension schemes deal with divorce and dissolution as at 31 July 2026, drawn from the schemes’ own published guidance and from Government Actuary’s Department material. It is general information, not legal advice and not a personal recommendation. Pension Plain is not authorised or regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Divorce settlements are legal matters and pension valuations are actuarial ones; your solicitor and your scheme administrator are the authorities on your case, and MoneyHelper offers free impartial guidance.

Key official sources

• gov.uk, Pensions and compensation for veterans, which hosts the Armed Forces 2015 Pension Remedy Divorce Information Note (gov.uk lists it as updated 29 July 2026; the document’s own title page reads 24 July 2026).
• Government Actuary’s Department, Factors Guidance Hub, for the prospective and retrospective McCloud divorce guidance issued for each scheme.
• NHS Pensions, Divorce or dissolution of a civil partnership and your pension, including the PD1, PD2 and PD3 forms and the schedule of charges.
• Teachers’ Pensions, Pension sharing.
• Civil Service Pension Scheme, Divorce, dissolution or annulment.
• LGPS member site, What happens to my LGPS pension if I get divorced? and its McCloud and divorce page.
• Police Pension Scheme 1987 Members’ Guide, for the pension credit member definition and the rule that credit benefits cannot be abated.
• Family Law (Scotland) Act 1985, section 10, for the marriage-period basis of matrimonial property in Scotland.
• Welfare Reform and Pensions Act 1999, section 34, for the four-month implementation period.

Fact-checked: 31 July 2026