A Guide to the Treatment of Pensions on Divorce (Second Edition)
Class Legal are distributing print copies of A Guide to the Treatment of Pensions on Divorce (Second Edition) on behalf of the Pension Advisory Group.
Dispatched from 28th June 2024
The Pension Advisory Group is a multi-disciplinary group of professionals specialising in the field of financial remedies and pensions on divorce. The original group (PAG1) was formed in June 2017 under the joint chairmanship of Mr Justice Francis and His Honour Judge Edward Hess with the aim of improving understanding of the complex area of law relating to pensions on divorce and enabling more consistent and fairer outcomes. The first Guide to the Treatment of Pensions on Divorce was published in 2019, mainly for the benefit of professionals working in the field. The group reconvened as PAG2 in 2022, again under the joint chairmanship of Mr Justice Francis and His Honour Judge Edward Hess, with many of the original members and a few new ones. PAG2’s purpose was to update and review the PAG1 Guide. This second edition is the product of many years’ work and the collaborative efforts of PAG members. It has the support of the President of the Family Division and the Family Justice Council.
Class Legal are distributing the print copy of the report on behalf of the Pension Advisory Group.
If you would like to download the report for free, please go to https://www.nuffieldfoundation...
Print ISBN: 978-1-9164642-47 | Full colour | 192 pages
The Pensions Advisory Group (PAG) was created and its co-chairs (Francis J and HH Judge Hess) appointed by my predecessor Sir James Munby, but I was very pleased to welcome and endorse its first report in 2019, then noting with admiration that the importance of the work was demonstrated by the fact that a good many busy, multidisciplinary and experienced practitioners had given up so much valuable time over a long period to produce a definitive guidance on the approach to the issue of pensions in Financial Remedy cases before the Family Court. I noted that the membership of PAG and the quality of this report establish its authority to pronounce on these matters. I predicted that the report would de-mystify this complex area and establish clear ground rules for the proper approach to be taken in cases in which pensions were involved. This prediction has proved to be substantially correct and the case law since 2019 has shown that the original PAG report has been very influential in driving a real and positive change.
I recognise, however, as have the members of PAG, that there is more work to be done, that the world of pensions does not stand still and that an updated and improved report is desirable and necessary to keep up the forward drive on this subject. The recently published paper ‘Fair Shares’ empirically demonstrates that parties going through a divorce still all too often misunderstand or overlook pensions or wrongly consider them to be the unassailable personal property of the party who generated the fund.
It is clear that the members of PAG have stepped forward and worked extremely hard over the last 18 months to take on board the post-2019 case law and other developments in the world of pensions. They have plainly given careful thought to feedback from the first report, and have, accordingly, updated and improved the original report to produce a fresh report, which will be known as ‘PAG2’ for short.
I thoroughly and enthusiastically endorse this new report and, in doing so, again commend it to all judges and practitioners as formal guidance to be applied when any issue regarding a pension falls to be determined in Financial Remedy proceedings.
I want also to record my formal and sincere thanks to everyone who has taken part in this important project. I suspect that my gratitude will again soon be shared by practitioners and judges up and down the country as they become used to referring to the wisdom contained within the pages of PAG2 on a day-to-day basis.
The Right Honourable Sir Andrew McFarlane
President of the Family Division
December 2023
