Securing your future: Financial planning before, during and after divorce or separation

A few housekeeping things before we get started-- we are going to be recording today's session. And everyone who registered will get a copy of the recording and the slides, too, and useful resources sheet. You'll see there's a Q&A function at the top of the screen. Please do use that to ask your questions. And there's a toggle on there where you can choose to post your question anonymously, if you'd prefer to.

Whether you post anonymously or not, please don't provide too much personal information in today's session. There is a process we need to follow if we are going to give financial advice. So we cannot give that in today's session on an individual basis. And also, just a note that we're not legal advisors, too--

In terms of introductions, I am Laura Bird. I'm part of the Financial Planning Group here at WTW. We provide education, guidance, and support to individuals with their overall financial planning matters. I'm also joined by Helen Howcroft today. Helen's a chartered financial planner at atomos and specializes in complex financial affairs, including pensions and divorce. And she'll be sharing experiences with us today. So welcome, Helen.

HELEN HOWCROFT: Thank you, Laura.

LAURA BIRD: As many of you will already know, atomos is a financial planning and wealth management firm with which WTW has a strategic alliance. And our alliance with atomos gives us access to 60 experienced financial planners across the UK like Helen. And it provides atomos with-- their individual clients with access to our best investment ideas through the atomos portfolios that are managed by WTW's investment line of business.

So we're going to start today by looking at the basics of separation and divorce. And we're also going to touch on the rights or, in many cases, complete lack of them for people who are cohabiting rather than married. And then we're going to come onto talk about the divorce process. Helen's going to take us through the different parts and go into more detail about how the financial process works and how long it all takes.

Helen will then take us through how to achieve a financial settlement, including some of the common misconceptions people have about dividing assets and agreeing on financial arrangements. And then lastly, we'll come on to talking about the future. We're going to cover budgeting and planning for income sources post-separation, and lastly, some admin and financial essentials that will set you up for your future, too.

So let's start today by handing over to Helen, who's going to take us through understanding separation, divorce, and cohabitation.

HELEN HOWCROFT: Thank you, Laura. November each year sees Good Divorce Week. This is something set up by Resolution, who is an organization whose aim is to help people navigate the divorce journey in the nicest possible way.

Unfortunately, in the UK, we are seeing a rise in the number of contested divorces happening. Now, during today's talk, I'm predominantly going to be covering the law in England and in Wales. However, I will be highlighting where there are differences in Scotland and in Northern Ireland. And if I refer to and when I refer to the word "divorce," I'm also talking about civil partnerships, and also same-sex marriages.

But before we start talking and actually going through the divorce process, I thought it was important that we actually look at cohabitation and thinking about what those rights are for cohabitees. Over the last 20 years, what we have seen is a decline in the number of marriages. And that has actually then correlated with many more people living together as cohabitees.

We now have 6.2 million cohabiting couples in the UK. Unfortunately, they have no rights. And many people are just simply not aware of this. Many people believe that there is something called common law-- that if you've been living with someone, say, for six months, 12 months, two years, depending on who you speak to, and they all have a different idea of when common law starts, it doesn't exist. In Scotland, they do have some limited rights for cohabitation, but not in England and Wales.

The Labour Party are actually doing something to address this. And we were expecting a consultation to be happening this autumn. We haven't seen it yet. So we now have to expect it in 2026, where they are proposing or expecting to propose that there will be some form of limited rights around cohabitation, but nowhere near what those rights are as though you are as a married couple.

But let's now start looking at the divorce itself. So the numbers are just simply staggering. 42% of all marriages in the UK end in divorce. And the number was higher. But due to COVID and backlogs and things, we have seen that decline. But it's at 42%, with over 100,000 divorces happening in the UK every 12 months.

And if we have any people on the call today from Hastings, Hastings is actually the divorce capital of the UK. The average age of starting divorce proceedings is 44 for a woman and 46 for a man. And what we have also seen is as people are getting married later and later in life, we are now seeing a rise in the number of people getting divorced over the age of 50. And that number is now up to 36%.

These over-50-year-olds are called the gray divorce or silver divorces, depending on which newspaper you read, alluding to the number of divorces happening over the age of 50. And in my personal experience, I've seen a big rise in the number of divorces happening with those getting divorced within three-- within six months of retirement.

Now, divorce is an incredibly emotional time. And it doesn't matter how well someone is presenting or how well they think they are really dealing with this. They will be going through a big period of change and adjustment. They will be worrying about what's going to happen in the future.

Now, you may have seen this before, this chart. It's the Kübler-Ross Change Curve. It was actually first created for dealing with change, more to do around the workplace. I've also seen it called the seven stages of grief. But this is really relevant when you are going through the divorce journey because not everybody, when they're going through that divorce journey, are going to be in the same emotional state.

Now, this is really, really important because if you are the person that has decided you want to kick off the divorce and start the divorce proceedings, maybe you've been thinking about getting divorced for quite some time. Your transition through these stages of change and emotional change is actually going to probably be far quicker than somebody who, say, has just found out that their partner is having an affair.

That immediate shock that they are going through and they can't believe this is happening to them-- and if they start divorce proceedings at that stage, it is the worst time to really be starting to try and negotiate what happens with the children and what deal-- and what you're going to deal with the finances and how you're going to separate them because you're being driven by anger and, potentially, fear and all of these things. And your emotions are at this really heightened stage.

All I can say is that from what I've seen, people typically take two years to transition through this journey and to come out the other side. And you will come out the other side. It's really important to have as many people around you supporting you through this time and to really think about empowering yourself because for me, knowledge really is power.

And let's look at the process. As I've mentioned a few moments ago, you don't have to start the divorce process immediately. Many people will agree that they're going to get divorced, but then just separate. And then they may not go and start the divorce journey for, say, nine months, 12 months, two years, and sometimes longer.

During this time, you-- many people worry about what's going to happen to the children. Where are they going to live? Will I see them at all? That's a very, very common concern that we have, especially for those working parents around the children. And then we have the finances. Can I afford to carry on living my life? Will I have to move home? All of these things are going to be really playing on people's minds and can play on their minds during this process.

So rather than worrying about it, you can actually do things and start actually finding out what is actually doable. Where finances allow, now is a really good time to actually go and get some advice. If you can afford to go and see a family lawyer, have that consultation with a family lawyer to understand what it is that they believe that-- how things could be separated.

Also, speak to a financial advisor and find out if, say, that you could end up with a 50/50 split on your finances, what does that mean for you? Can you keep the family home, or will you need to look at moving either to a new area or to a cheaper property?

You will need to collate financial information as part of agreeing your financial division of your assets. There are now some really great apps out there that you can use to automatically pull through and download your expenditure. And it does this from the main High Street banks, but also from your credit cards.

There are apps out there such as Emma. Clients have used Snoop and others. There's one called Moneyhub that used to be called LifeStage a few years ago. All of these do the same things, where you log in with all-- and you download and have all of your banking details pulling through. And it will pull through all of your transactions on your credit cards and your bank accounts for the last 12 months. It saves such a big amount of time doing that.

The other thing that's a sensible thing to do at this stage is to start collating the paperwork that you're going to need for the financial aspect of divorce. You will need to get up-to-date valuations of all of your assets, your pensions. You need to know how much is outstanding on the mortgage. You'll also need to get 12 months worth of bank statements and 12 months worth of credit cards. So starting doing that now and pulling your list together is really sensible.

If you're working with a family lawyer, many family lawyers no longer need this to be sent to them in a paper-based format. And it can now be sent in an electronic format, which just makes things far, far easier these days.

But what does the divorce actually involve? Well, there are actually three stages to a divorce. The first bit is the legal ending of the marriage. If you go to a family lawyer, and a family lawyer is a lawyer that specializes in divorce, and you ask them, how long will this take, they will give you the answer to this first question, how long will it take to end the actual marriage itself?

Then separately, if you have children, you will need to make arrangements around the children. You might want to turn that into an official document called a children's order. On average, children's arrangements can take around 11 months to negotiate between parties.

And then we have the financial division of the assets. And many people-- we turn that into a financial order. And all of these three things can run concurrently or can run separately.

Now, I'll be focusing today predominantly on the financial aspects of it. So what is the process itself with the legal ending of the marriage? And this is where it does differ with Scotland. So we no longer have things like decree nisi and decree absolute in the UK.

No-fault divorce started in 2022. Before that, in the UK, we had-- in England and Wales, we had to do pointing a finger of blame if you wanted to start the divorce process within two years of separating. We no longer have that in England and Wales.

So instead, what we do is you file an application online. You can do this on your own or you can do this jointly as a couple. The court acknowledge it. And if it was only the one person who did the application, then the other spouse receives an-- the notification from court that your spouse has started divorce proceedings.

That then starts a 20-week reflection period, where nothing can happen from the legal ending of the marriage perspective. And once that 20-week period is up, then you can apply for a conditional offer. This is what used to be called the decree nisi, and is still called the decree nisi in Northern Ireland. And that's then followed by you applying for the final order, which used to be called in the-- in England and Wales the decree absolute. Again, in Northern Ireland, it still is.

This whole process in England and Wales takes, on average, 7 and 1/2 months for an uncontested divorce. But for a contested divorce, and they're the ones that I typically get involved with, they take far, far, far longer than that.

From a Scottish process perspective, you have to have grounds for divorce, same as in Northern Ireland. And if you don't want to be pointing the finger of blame, you have to be not living together for at least one year and both of you agreeing to the divorce before you can start the divorce process, or if one of you doesn't agree, it's two years. And then there's an ordinary application, or you could do a simplified application. And then you apply to court. And the court makes a decision and it's-- the process is finalized. It typically takes two to three months.

In Northern Ireland, you actually have to wait two years before you can start that divorce proceedings unless you want to be pointing the finger of blame. And you need to be married for at least two years in Northern Ireland before you can start the process. On average, the Northern Ireland process takes five months.

So what do we actually have to do with arranging the finances? So the first thing we have to do is we have to complete what we call the Form E. I will come onto the Form E in a second because it's a really important document. I'll refer to the D81 one in a moment as well.

Once you complete your Form E, you swap your Form E with the other side. And if there's any areas when you receive the Form E from your spouse that you don't understand, you seek clarification on those things.

Then you start negotiating a deal and you start making offers to each other. And then, finally, you agree on a deal and you agree on a division of those assets, which you then draw up into a financial order.

And the financial order includes a-- the document-- the back is called a pension sharing annex, which deals with any pensions that are to be separated. And the D81 form is the form that basically tells the court, this is why we believe that this divorce-- this division of assets that we've agreed is fair.

Now, if you're not using lawyers and not going down the mediation route and everything is being done around the kitchen table, you miss all of that Form E-- you miss all of the Form E side and you go straight to the D81. But the D81 form will still require you to declare all of your assets and all of your income and expenditure. So you don't get away with it.

And then finally, when we've got that-- the financial order, it gets sent off to the court. And the judge will review every single order that comes through to them. And I have seen some get rejected by the courts because they haven't found that the-- that what's been agreed is fair. And then once it's back from court and it's been sealed, then we can go about separating the finances and implementing that pension sharing order itself.

Now, the Form E-- this document is a really, really important document if you're going down the contested form of getting divorce and using family lawyers, and also working with a mediator, to an extent. This is where you have to, essentially, declare what all your assets are, what all your liabilities-- so in plain English, your home and your mortgage. These are the kind of things you put on there-- your pensions, your savings, your bank accounts.

Ironically, it still says-- or interestingly, it still says that you don't need to state your State Pension on your Form E. But it is always advisable to get the State Pension forecast. Up until 2015, we used to be able to split the State Pension.

If there was a non-working spouse, if somebody had given up their career to look after the children, the spouse could inherit their spouse's State Pension entitlement. All of those rules, unfortunately, disappeared in 2015. And we can no longer share the State Pension.

However, for those older people on the call who will remember the State Second Pension, then the State Second Pension can still be shared. So it's really important that you do go to contact the Department of Work and Pensions to get a State Pension forecast and evaluation for divorce purposes. And they will provide you with that.

You then need to declare what your income is from all sources. So we're not just talking about your income from work. We're talking about rental property income, dividends, share portfolios, all different types of income.

We also declare your expenditure. Now, if there's one thing that you remember from today's court-- today's presentation, this is the most important thing. Your Form E, the expenditure schedule, is where you are telling the courts, this is how much I need to spend and how much I need in order to maintain my lifestyle. So essentially, you're setting your stall out to say, this is actually what I need.

And what I find is that people do not spend enough time understanding what the true extent of their expenditure is. And they put down what they think they spend or what they think they need. And they are doing themselves a big disservice because they are not going to get anywhere near as much as what, potentially, they could be getting to maintain a decent, relevant lifestyle.

Now, this is where a financial planner, such as myself-- we really come into our own here. We see clients' income. And we see their expenditure patterns on a day-to-day basis. And we can really help clients understand what their expenditure is to really help them with this part of the form.

And capital needs-- again, another area that, again, we can help with that I see clients do not spend enough time. If you have one family car at the moment, will you now need two family cars? And therefore, if you do, somebody is going to need to buy it. These things need to be declared.

Equally, your living arrangements-- if it's very obvious that you're not going to be able to keep the family home because there's just not enough money available, then you do actually need to be thinking about, what kind of property can I move into, and what is affordable? And we need to know all of on this Form E.

And then to go alongside the Form E, then we then have this 12 months proof of paperwork and all of these valuations. We also need tax. So your tax return, your payslips, your P60s-- all of these things need to be gathered as well as your mortgage statements.

So, so far, what we've done is just looked at gathering that initial bit the-- of the paperwork. Now we're going to focus on the actual division of the assets and how do we actually get to an offer stage. This is where I believe, again, as financial planners, we really come into our own because we can really empower people to understand what it is that they need and, when they receive an offer from their other half, whether that offer is good enough that they can agree it or whether they need to go back and ask for something different.

Now, there are many, many, many misconceptions in the UK as to what somebody is entitled to. I'm not going to run through all of these individually because it simply just take me too long to go through them all. But I think the most important one that I'll pull out here is that prenups are not legally binding.

We are seeing in the UK that more and more people are having prenups. And we are seeing that the courts are generally following the spirits of a prenup where the prenup was set up properly in the first place and both of you actually sought legal advice in the first place. But they are absolutely not legally binding.

The most important thing to be aware of when it comes to divorce is that a divorce is a big negotiation. There are no clear rules. What we do know is that the courts want there to be a fairness when it comes to a splitting of the finances. And where possible, the courts want there to be a clean break.

Now, we also have something in England and Wales called the needs basis. Everybody needs to have a roof over their head, to be able to put food on the table, and to be able to look after their children. Those are the basic needs that we have.

And in the vast number of divorces in the UK, most of them fall into this camp because there just aren't the surplus assets out there. And therefore, the courts don't care whether you've acquired that pension from working yourself or you've inherited some money because all of the money is in one big melting pot to be separated.

Where there are surplus assets, then have something called the sharing basis. And this is where people then can and do start negotiating with regards what is deemed to be a matrimonial asset and what isn't a matrimonial asset.

In Scotland, the rules are slightly more rigid. And they do look at things from a fair sharing of matrimonial assets. And when it comes to that fair sharing, they do look at having an equal sharing of assets acquired during the marriage unless certain circumstances can be shown that merit an unequal split of those assets.

Now, we also know that not all assets are the same. And this is a big nod to pensions. Now, I could probably talk for an hour on pensions alone, which I just haven't got time for today. But the most important thing is that at WTW, you will have your defined contribution pension. It is a pension with a pot of money attached to it. We call it a defined contribution pension or we call it a money purchase arrangement.

For those people who have been at WTW for a very long time, they may have benefits still in the old final salary scheme. And the old final salary scheme is a promise of an income in the future. What the courts require is that a value, a capital value, is put on that promise of an income. And quite often when we have a final salary scheme in place when it comes to divorcing and dealing with pensions, you will need to obtain a pensions report from an actuary to actually work out what the real value of that pension is.

Now, a word of warning-- obtaining these pensions reports-- I had a client last week tell me that they've been quoted 5,000 pounds for a report. And the average length of time it takes for the reports to be turned around is six months. So it can slow proceedings down.

Now, in 2019, this guide was produced. And it was the first guide in the UK for helping the legal profession deal with pensions on divorce. So at least now we do have some good outline guides. It's been-- since been updated to the 2023 version.

Now, what we often find is that one person will want to keep the family home, and somebody else will want to keep their pension. But what we know is that a pension-- when you take money out, some of it is tax-free. And most of it will be subject to income tax.

So the Guide to Treatment of Pensions and Divorce, or PAG, as we call it, has put out some guidelines that said, if you want a rough rule of thumb, if you're going to be a basic rate taxpayer in retirement, then you can reduce the value of that pension by 15%. And that gives you a fair share when we're looking at offsetting, or it's 30% if you're going to be a higher rate taxpayer. So that means that if you have 100,000 pound pension, it's the equivalent of being worth 85,000 when compared against the family home.

The other thing to think about is maintenance. Laura will be covering this in a moment. But we can, where possible and if there's enough assets-- the courts will look at whether you can actually capitalize the maintenance. And rather than paying a monthly spousal maintenance, instead, we will pay a lump sum. And that's called capitalising maintenance.

Now, there's many different ways of approaching how we reach this settlement. The top, DIY, Do It Yourself, around the kitchen table, glass of wine, cup tea, whatever takes your fancy-- this is the cheapest and absolutely normally the most least acrimonious way of dealing with divorce, all the way down to litigation, which involves a three-stage court process, followed probably by a three-day trial. You're looking at hundreds of thousands of pounds at that stage.

The top four are, I would definitely say-- are the nice ways of dealing with the settlement, really looking at working with you two as a couple to get you through this process in the nicest way possible and actually obtaining an-- a deal that works for the two of you.

Resolution Together is only something that started two years ago. It's where you each work with one family lawyer to try and negotiate a deal, and you both receive the advice at the same time. It doesn't stop you from having your own lawyer separately. But you work without one lawyer to really help you achieve a deal.

This is different to mediation because a mediator's job is to get you to agree a deal. And they aren't necessarily trained in law. And they can't use their legal knowledge, if they're a legal lawyer mediator, to help you.

Resolution Together fixes that problem. And the cases I've been involved with-- it's really, really good. It works really well. And I find that typically, the lawyers who are trained in Resolution Together are actually really good at their jobs.

Collaborative is another nice way, very much championed by Resolution, the organization. And this is where you have your lawyers and your-- each party sit around a table together to negotiate things together. And it, again, works really, really well where there isn't acrimony and where things aren't being driven by emotions.

Then the bottom half is very much then driven by the legal side. You're lawyer-negotiated going all the way through to the court process. The court process is you have an FDA first, Financial Directions Appointment, followed by an FDR, which is your Financial Dispute Resolution. And then you have your final hearing.

Many, many, many cases stop before the final hearing. Many of them stop at the FDR stage. And where finances are now, I'm now seeing a trend where the FDR is not dealt with in court. And instead, you get a judge to come to the solicitor's offices. And you all sit around a table together and listen to the judge telling you that if this was a full trial, this is how they would actually look at how you separate the assets.

And then, finally, there is help at hand. We have many people on the legal side that can help you. On the emotional side, you do have your therapists and your family therapist. But on the financial side, the pensions actuary is there to crunch numbers. But we as financial planners-- we are the experts at understanding how pensions work, how investments work, and really helping you look to see what things-- and how things can be resolved.

So as I said, the process then goes from drawing up the financial order, gets sealed by court, and then we can look at separating the finances and implementing the pension sharing order. The pension sharing order-- once it's been sent to the pension companies, they have four months to implement that pension sharing order.

And typically, in my experience, they take to four months. On average, a contested financial order will take 62 weeks, or 14 months. So we are looking at a long process here. But now back over to Laura, and she will look at the future.

LAURA BIRD: Thank you, Helen. So when it comes to legal costs, as Helen has said, these divorce costs can range from hundreds to hundreds of thousands of pounds. And you might ask, how on Earth am I going to pay for all of this?

There is a limit to affordability. But we're going to take a look at some different sources of funds that you could think about. The first one is about using the free legal services that are available to you just for a bit of initial help, like an employee assistance program.

So for example, for a-- WTW colleagues, I have included the details of our employee assistance program in the top right. And that's accessible via phone or via the Help at Hand app. You might also have a legal helpline linked to your home insurance that might give you a bit of legal advice.

Legal aid, contrary to popular belief, is actually only available in the cases of domestic abuse for divorce. But there is some limited means-tested support for mediation. So if you think that might apply to you, that's worth a look.

You could decide to pay for legal costs using a combination of savings and income if you have enough, or perhaps loans from family and friends. Some people use 0% credit cards, where they already have a limit there, and perhaps loans as well. But a warning-- legal fees loans are really expensive.

Speaking to Helen in preparing for today, she was telling me that legal loans typically have annual percentage rates payable of about 30%. So you're looking at a pretty harsh credit card equivalent rate there. So make sure you can afford to pay back debt.

Most online services do offer some element of capped fees, as well, which can help you budget and avoid unexpected costs. But primarily, don't be scared of asking. Go to the legal services and say, how much will this cost me, using your services? Are there any capped fee arrangements that you have-- but obviously, accepting that that will have limited level of service there. Thank you.

And then we're going to look at children arrangements. So childcare responsibility might be different because after separation, shared care means often that you've got a change to your working hours. And perhaps you might need before or after-school childcare. So it's important to think about how that might affect your finances if you've got to pay for those things, too.

You might find out that you're entitled to child benefit, where you weren't claiming it previously. And that's because child benefit is assessed on the highest income in your household. It's claimed by the parent who the children live with most of the time. So if you do a 50/50 split, you can choose who claims it. But you can't both claim it.

If your taxable earnings are under 60,000 pounds, you'll get the full amount. For earnings between 60,000 and 80,000 pounds, the benefit is gradually removed. And they do that via you paying it back at the end of the year in your tax return.

So as an example of what you'll get in the 2025-26-- that's the current tax year-- if you've got two children, it amounts to 43.30 pounds per week. So that adds up to 2,251.60 pounds a year. And that's actually untaxed income. So it is definitely worth claiming if you are able to.

So child maintenance, lastly-- the non-resident parent, which means the parent the children don't normally live with-- they typically pay maintenance to the other parent. There's an online calculator available to help you work out what that amount might be, or you can decide to make your own arrangements instead, if you wish. The amount quoted by the calculator does tend to be used in a lot of cases other than high-net-worth cases, where the amount does tend to be more.

A lot of divorce settlements do allow for child maintenance to be paid until the children leave university, whereas that statutory calculator ends at 18 or where they finished A-Levels type year. So it's important to think about your additional costs for children, and particularly things like private school fees. You're going to need a separate arrangement as part of your divorce as to who pays those going forwards.

So moving on, will you have enough income to meet your needs? And this is thinking about all the sources of income that you'll have to meet those needs that you set out in the Form E process. So looking at your earned income, you might need to consider an increase to your working hours to cover your costs or even change your jobs to boost your income, which is going to be a big change, but definitely worth considering.

Thinking about state benefits, you might be entitled to Universal Credit. You might be entitled to Child Benefit, which we've talked about before, or a Council Tax Reduction. So that Council Tax Reduction is 25% off your bill. And that's where there's only one adult in your household. So that can make a good difference to your monthly budget, too.

Talking about maintenance from your ex-partner, in some cases, you're going to receive child maintenance, as we've covered. And Helen, do you want to talk through what we're seeing for typical spousal maintenance now?

HELEN HOWCROFT: Yes, of course. So it used to be back in the day that maintenance was paid to a spouse for life. They were called term orders. But ironically, they carried on indefinitely for the rest of that person's life.

We just don't see that happening anymore. And what we typically see is that spousal maintenance is paid for a set period of time. There needs to normally be a reason for that end date. And it's typically either State Pension age or when the person who's paying the maintenance is-- was expecting to retire, or it could just be that it's being paid for four years to allow the spouse who's receiving the maintenance to get back on their feet again and to get back into work and into employment. But we are seeing it's getting shorter and shorter than what it was from years gone by.

LAURA BIRD: Thank you. And so if you get all those income sources together, compare those to your needs budget. And then you can work out whether you need to make changes going forwards.

Moving on, taking care of a few essentials is going to be a really important step in protecting yourself and moving forward. So changing beneficiaries-- it's really important to update the beneficiaries on your pensions, any life insurance, and your will because if you don't, your assets may end up going to someone you no longer intend.

Also, don't forget to do things like update your employer and your GP with your next of kin details and emergency contacts. Update those legal documents. We've already touched on the will. But if you've lasting powers of attorney in place, update those. If you haven't, please think about putting those in place because they're really valuable documents, no matter how old you are-- and any trust documentation you've got, too.

Review your insurance needs. So now is a good time, if you're a WTW colleague with the benefits window open-- think about your life insurance, your critical illness, and your income protection needs because you're likely now a single-income household. So it's important that you and your dependents are adequately protected in case you can no longer work.

And then lastly, do aim to build up an emergency fund of three to six months of that essential spending because it will give you a financial safety net. And it will make you feel like you've got the peace of mind to move forwards. It's natural that some of these tasks are going to slip down your priority list. But if you do them, it can help you regain a sense of control and security going forwards.

So we'll be sending a copy of the recording of today's session to everyone who attended or registered. Everyone's going to get a copy of the slides, and also a useful resources sheet. So we've pulled together some helpful resources about the financial planning aspects of separation and divorce. And if you think you'd benefit from more personal support, we're going to go through the options now-- so the first of which being WTW's pension guidance service.

So this is available on FlexSmart-- Flexible Benefit platform as an anytime event. Guidance is delivered via WTW's regulated Financial Planning team. And it's a general financial planning MOT. And to attract the tax exemption, we do need to cover an element of retirement planning. But as part of that, we can help you with your budget planning questions on life insurance and protection needs and make sure that you've got enough for your future retirement, too.

So the way the service works is once you've elected the benefit on FlexSmarts, we will ask you to complete a confidential fact find. So that's a questionnaire that we can use to better understand your objectives, and also your general financial situation.

You then go on to our booking tool and book an-- a one-hours video call with one of our financial planners to suit you. So the difference between guidance and regulated advice is that we can't provide you with a personal recommendation for a regulated product during these guidance calls. But for specific product recommendations, such as separating your assets or implementing a pension sharing order, you'd need to move to regulated advice. And Helen's going to talk through how you could choose to engage with atomos for advice, if that's better suited to your needs.

HELEN HOWCROFT: Thank you, Laura. So at atomos, we are a financial planning and wealth management firm. So we not only help people going through divorce, but we also help people with all aspects of their financial planning. We really focus on their life goals and really look at what we can achieve for them moving forward so that they can achieve those dreams and aspirations with their finances. We offer advice on all areas, such as passing on wealth, tax planning, later life care, and retirement planning.

And I have a team of financial planners around the country. We go all the way up to Edinburgh and all the way down to Plymouth. So we have many advisors all around the country who would be very happy to have a conversation with you.

With our partnership with WTW, what we offer is a one-hour session with a financial planner without any obligation. To find out more, what we do is that we would arrange for one of our associates to gather some information from you. And if the chemistry is right and what you're looking for and the advice you're looking for is something that we can help with, we'll match you to one of our financial planners based on the expertise that you need. And I move to the Q&A.

LAURA BIRD: Thank you, Helen. So we've had a few questions come in through the Q&A. So we'll start working through those now with the time that we have available. So the first question-- if a partner has a DB pot, do you get a settlement instead, more thinking upon their death, you may not technically be their surviving spouse?

HELEN HOWCROFT: So with the DB pension, it depends, with the DB pension, whether it's a funded scheme or an unfunded scheme. So you can absolutely apply a pension sharing order against a DB pension. But what you receive will depend on that arrangement.

So if it is an unfunded scheme, such as the civil service/teachers pension, police, or whatever, then with that, the only option available is that you become a member of that pension scheme, as well, and that you receive an income from that-- their employer in the future. For private final salary schemes, or DB schemes, what the majority of them do is they would pay you a cash equivalent value into a pension instead, or you can give all of that up. And instead, you can ask for a capital sum-- say, extra money towards a house or more money from-- in your bank account-- instead of taking any of that DB money from your partner.

LAURA BIRD: Thank you. Our next question-- if properties have already been sold and you're both living separate financial lives and you decide years down the line to get divorced, do you still need to share financial information?

HELEN HOWCROFT: Unfortunately, yes, you do. And if you haven't obtained a financial order at the point that you separated and did a postnup at that stage or did anything along the finances, then all of your finances are potentially up for grabs with regards arranging a settlement now.

LAURA BIRD: That's a bit of a warning, isn't it?

HELEN HOWCROFT: That is a beautiful warning, yeah. And there was a case I've worked on. 16 years they'd been separated.

LAURA BIRD: Wow. Next one-- I have many pensions. Is there a benefit to amalgamating them before starting the divorce process or benefits to do that after?

HELEN HOWCROFT: When it comes to amalgamating pensions, I've-- what I would say is that if you are considering getting divorced, then it would probably not be sensible to look at going through the cost of amalgamating pensions beforehand because you just don't know what the arrangements are going to look like until you're actually going through that whole process. So you would expect that you will be going through a lot of expense just to then have to then unpick what you've done at some stage in the future.

LAURA BIRD: I'm in the middle of a divorce. And I'm at the stage where I need to show my finances for the consent order. I need a pensions report. Who do I contact to get a pensions report? I need to do this as soon as possible. I didn't realize it took that long. My other half requested theirs already. And theirs takes up to three months only.

HELEN HOWCROFT: So there's a few things that you said there. But if it's specifically to do with the pensions report, normally what happens is that a pensions report is normally requested on a joint basis. And if there are solicitors involved, normally the solicitors contact the actuaries to get the pensions report because there has to be a very clear remit sent to the actuaries for what you want the actuary to actually do their calculations on.

Are you looking at equalizing income in retirement, or are you looking at equalizing the capital sums? You only need the pension report for most cases where there are DB pensions. So that's what I would say. So it could be that you just need to get a valuation of your DB scheme. And you have to request that from the pension provider directly.

LAURA BIRD: After divorce, is the Child Benefit assessed on the income of both parents or just the income the pair of the parent the children live with? So I think that we talked about Child Benefit earlier. It's assessed just on the income of the household that the children live with.

If you do live within the same household still, it's going to be a problem because it will be assessed on the highest income in that household. But if you live by yourself with your children and they mainly live with you, it will be assessed on your income.

You do need to be really careful if you get together with a new partner and they've got a high income because you can end up in a situation where if a new partner moves in with you and they've got a high income, they actually have to pay back your Child Benefit in their tax return. So you can end up with some slightly odd situations. So that's worth bearing in mind there. Anything to add to that, Helen?

HELEN HOWCROFT: Yes. When a new partner moves in, it can impact maintenance because quite often, maintenance stops within six months of cohabitation.

LAURA BIRD: They definitely want to be careful of in the future. Is leaving a partner considered a life event to open benefits ad hoc? So that's a WTW FlexSmart conversation, mainly. So you'd need to double-check that. You can contact the FlexSmarts team to check that. But I would have thought separation is one of the things that they would consider as being a life event.

There are also various things that you can do at any time during the year, like you can alter your pension contributions at any time of the year. You can elect pensions guidance at any time of the year. So do double-check the terms and conditions on the Flexible Benefits platform that you've got. Helen, I don't know if you want to add anything on that.

HELEN HOWCROFT: I haven't got anything more to add on that side.

LAURA BIRD: So can we just decide to split the house 50/50 and divide joint assets and not take into account pensions or savings we both have, leaving only the divorce process to be completed?

HELEN HOWCROFT: That's quite a legal question. But you have to agree between you what you feel is a fair arrangement if you're arranging this yourself. And then you may remember that when I said with the D81 form-- that you declare on the D81 form why you think that division of assets is fair. If this is England and Wales, it's really down to what the two of you agree between you as being the fair division of assets.

LAURA BIRD: There's one about the atomos process. The QR code, when open, says "support for senior employees." How are you determining what level WTW colleague would be able to access the advice with atomos?

HELEN HOWCROFT: This is going to be-- it's all to do with the fees that-- basically, if we're doing any divorce work, it's charged on an hourly rate basis. And it's a case of whether you want to and can afford to pay those fees or where we are investing lump sums of money, we typically take on clients who've got 350,000 or more to invest.

LAURA BIRD: What happens if assets aren't split in line with the financial order? Would you need to go back to court?

HELEN HOWCROFT: Unfortunately, if the financial order is not being implemented and-- the court is normally the last stage of where you would get to. And in my experience, the courts would actually expect you to go to a mediation first to try and get you to resolve the conflict. But ultimately, if that-- if one party in the divorce is not living up to their side of the financial order, it will ultimately end up back in the courts.

LAURA BIRD: This one's about women in vulnerability. Although not my situation, it does concern me that women who marry, but potentially become homemaker and either don't have children or they have left the nest-- the person left behind might be in a vulnerable position.

HELEN HOWCROFT: I absolutely could not agree more with you on that side. Actually, I could talk about this for hours. Women are expected, if they have given up their careers and they're now getting-- especially women in their 50s, and they're separating, there will be some requirement and expectation by the courts that they do go back to work.

And thinking about women and the emotional journey that they're going through, but also thinking about the confidence levels if you've been out from work for a very long time, it really is a big double whammy for women who have given up their careers because they are going to be very much expected to do something about it. And the law isn't fair.

LAURA BIRD: This one is about children. If a child is over 16, do they have ultimate decision on where they reside?

HELEN HOWCROFT: So children-- it's actually quite interesting because there's a new piece of law just-- I think it went through a few weeks ago-- to deal with children. And what we have seen is that the voice of the child is now becoming really, really important in the law.

If we look at the courts, there is a court in London, in the Holborn. It's the children's court. They will allow children from the age of eight to go into court to say where they want to live, which is a staggeringly young age. But we are definitely hearing the voice of the child, certainly teenagers, anything from age 10 onwards, child-inclusive mediation-- we have mediators who specialize in working with children to really find out where that child wants to live. So absolutely, age 16-- absolutely, they can choose where they want to live.

LAURA BIRD: Can a court overrule around the kitchen table agreements which both parties are comfortable with?

HELEN HOWCROFT: So probably to answer that one question, if both of you have agreed it and then you have sent of your D81 and then the financial order has been rejected by the judge, then all they're doing is they're rejecting that D81. So essentially, you haven't done a good enough job of selling that financial order to the judge in the first place. So they want to see why your division of assets is fair. And that's why I keep using the word "fair"-- is really, really, really important as part of this.

If you have agreed to around the kitchen table what the division is, then you won't be going down the court process from the normal court, where you would have a judge presiding over what the division of the assets are. Very few cases end up actually going to full trial. So I think the question is more to do with that the judge rejects your financial order and wants you to go back and potentially put in a stronger argument, or will give you some guidance as to where they think it's not quite fair and it needs to be adjusted.

LAURA BIRD: Next one is on pensions. Will a pension transfer value detail suffice, or will the value be the same as for divorce purposes? So I think that you went into that a bit.

HELEN HOWCROFT: So the transfer value will be absolutely what you put on a Form E or a D81 form. It's definitely the value that you put on there. But if it's a final salary scheme valuation, it's highly unlikely to be worth the equivalent of what's in a money purchase arrangement or a defined contribution pension pot. And that's where you would then need to get a pensions report produced by an actuary.

And these pensions reports, the guidances from PAG-- that you should get them in every single case where the defined benefit valuation is more than 200,000. And you should consider getting one where the valuation of that defined benefit pension is worth more than 100,000.

LAURA BIRD: Thank you. We're going to have to wrap up the Q&A there. So I'm sorry to those of you who we didn't get a chance to answer your questions. So moving on into our next webinar of the series, it's on 12th of January at 12:00 PM. And we're going to focus on retirement planning when the annual allowance bites. So you can register here or on our events page. And we're going to be releasing dates of our 2026 webinar series very soon.

I just want to thank you for joining us today. Thank you so much, Helen. It's been really interesting. You've got some really extensive experience in this area. And that's come across today. And hopefully, all of you will have taken something away from it.

And before I go, I will finish by sharing our limitations of reliance and saying that today is for information only and shouldn't be relied on to make financial decisions without advice. And then here is atomos's similar caveats. So thank you all for joining us today, and goodbye.