Divorce and Financial Planning: Cash Flow Modelling, Mortgages and Pensions

In this episode of MyFamily Pod, host Nichola Bright, family lawyer at Myerson Solicitors, speaks with financial planning experts Jenni Macdonald and Liz Grimshaw from Revival Financial Planning.

Together, they explore the financial challenges that arise during divorce and separation and explain how expert financial planning can provide clarity and security during turbulent times.

Topics include:

• The role of cash flow modelling and expenditure forecasting in divorce settlements.
• Understanding mortgage capacity reports and their impact on asset division.
• Demystifying pension sharing to secure long-term financial wellbeing.
• Broader financial planning strategies for major life changes such as redundancy, retirement, or moving home.

Whether you are navigating a divorce, supporting a loved one, or seeking expert financial advice, this episode offers practical tips and insightful strategies to help you plan confidently for the future.

If you’re seeking support for a family law or financial planning matter, our expert team at Myerson Solicitors is here to help. We provide compassionate, tailored advice on divorce, financial arrangements, and co-parenting to ensure you receive the support you need.

Find out more here: https://www.myerson.co.uk/personal/family-law

For more resources and support, you can also reach out to Jenni and Liz at Revival Financial Planning

Find out more here: https://www.revivalfp.co.uk

Stay tuned for more episodes of MyFamily Pod, where we tackle the issues that matter most to families. Don’t forget to subscribe and follow us on social media for updates!

LinkedIn: Myerson Solicitors 

Instagram: @Myerson.Solicitors 

Website: www.myerson.co.uk/ 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hello everyone, welcome to My Family Pod. I'll be speaking to Jenny MacDonald-Sykes and Liz Grimshaw of Revival Financial Planning about the importance of financial planning in divorce, cash play modelling, mortgages and pensions.

UNKNOWN: 0:27

Music

SPEAKER_00: 0:30

Hello, everyone. I'm here today with Liz Brimshaw and Jenny MacDonald-Sykes from Revival Financial Planning. If you'd like to introduce yourself, ladies. Yeah. So, hi, I'm Jenny. Thanks for having us here today. I am a chartered financial advisor and I've been working as a financial advisor for many, many years. And about four years ago, Liz and I met, didn't we? And we both sort of decided we had a bit of a passion for wanting to help people make the most of their money and particularly help people with sort of divorce financial planning. Morning, I'm Liz. Thanks. Yeah, thanks for having us. So I retrained as a financial advisor about five years ago, just about the time just before I met Jenny. And as a career change for me, I'd worked in the city, but wanted to retrain and do something different. And yeah, Jenny and I met at a workplace and we chatted about the difference in you know different specialisms that we could have within financial advice and we both decided that actually we could make quite a big difference when people are going through divorce or building a new financial plan for the future. Brilliant and that's how we know each other because obviously at Myerson I'm a family lawyer and we have a family team here specialising in divorce and family separation and often need your services to help with our clients going through that and the financial advice they need at the beginning and the middle and the end of that process. and how we can help each other, what we'll talk about now. So divorce and the division of financial assets often requires assistance from financial planners, financial advisors, especially when it comes to cash flow modeling for a client. So for example, they are in a situation where they are looking to divide their assets and trying to negotiate a settlement with their spouse. They may or may not be in court proceedings by this point, but they are looking at figures. So, for example, they're looking at selling the house and they might have a cash sum and a lump sum payment coming to them or hopefully coming to them. And they want to see how much they need to be able to move on with their lives. And that's where they need a cash flow forecast for their future they might be looking at. They might be in their 40s or 50s. They might have young children. They might be looking to retire in the next 10, 20 years. And they really want to see how much money that they will need from their divorce to be able to have a comfortable standard of living if possible. And that applies to both husband and wife, both sides. So tell me about how you can help those people going through separation who need cash flow forecasting. And what does that involve from your point of view? How much detail do you need to go into? And what does a cash flow model look like? So every client's different. Everybody's situation's different. Sometimes we might be looking to give someone peace of mind. Sometimes they might need a bit of a reality check. But the way that we work is that we would talk to them about their current income and outgoings. And it may be that following the divorce, that would look a little bit different because they might be needing to sell a family home or whatever, again, depending on the situation. So we'd look at income, outgoings, all of their assets, and then we'd run a model and show that, right, okay, this is where you're at. This is perhaps a proposed settlement, or these are the ideas that you can put forward in terms of a settlement. And it's often a three-way conversation, isn't it? Genuine looking, like, you know, with the client, with the solicitor, this is what's perhaps realistic in terms of a percentage split. Family home, assets, pensions. and then model that and see where the gaps are. Perhaps the client might need to adjust their expectations in terms of spending, or it may be that they need to push for a bit more in terms of pension share. We can advise that. And we often run several models, don't we? Yeah. I'm going to ask about the models and how many models you might get us to run. I think because often we get involved at the beginning of the process. So then we might be running the initial models and, you know, this is what we think or this is what they think settlement might look like. But then with all the back and forth and the negotiations, it's sort of, OK, well, the other side has offered this. How does that look? Yeah. Will I be OK with that sort of settlement?

UNKNOWN: 4:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 4:44

it's not quite right so we're going to go back and offer this how does that look and it's just giving that peace of mind of not just what the just what the figures are because sometimes the figures themselves are quite overwhelming but putting that into a model that's visual that allows someone to see what the long-term outlook looks like and that actually in most cases they are going to be okay they might have to adjust expectations a little bit but actually they're going to be okay going forward sort of making sense of those blunt figures there sometimes and then sense do they um Are they sort of long reports or they used, I'm guessing they'll be user friendly, not just for solicitors, but for the actual client themselves so they can see in black and white how much money they would have on a yearly basis, for example, if they, you know, to supplement their income. Yeah, I mean, the reports, the kind of model that we show run from their age today up to 90, 99. And so it's kind of, you know, a whole lifespan. And they're often very conservative in terms of spending and also asset and investment growth. You don't know what's going to happen in the market. You have to be conservative in these things. Exactly. And then we'll run several models and then we put those into a report. But we run them. Put them into a pot, but then we'll have either an in-person meeting or a Zoom meeting and run through it with the client to make sure that they understand. And then that report is passed to the solicitor as well so they can see our different options. And sometimes they've had an offering from the other side and we'll model those as well. And then they can see how that looks. Okay, that's good. And what sort of questions would... A typical client of yours asks those things. They ask things like, will I be able to afford a house? Or will I run out of money? Or will I be able to retire by age 55? Do you get these sorts of questions? Bullseye. Yeah, definitely. Will I run out of money is probably your biggest question. Will I have enough? And I think, what does retirement look like? Because it's all very well worrying about the situation right now. But actually, what does it look like? 10, 15, 20 years down the road and will I have to downsize at some point to make things work? Yeah, those are all common questions. Yeah, and that must be quite a common part of someone's plan. Potentially if they've got young children and they have a big house at the moment, some people must think I am going to downsize when the children are at uni or after that point in life. although that's a harsh reality of it. I think more and more I'm seeing that people are factoring that downsizing into their cash flow forecasts. I think they have to. I think the cost of living is expensive. Exactly. And if people are on the younger side when they're getting divorced and they need that share of the family home to be a bit larger and perhaps take a lesser percentage of the pension, then we factor in downsizing and we model that quite often, don't we? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because you've got to factor in... the potential price increase of their current property. It must be so difficult to do that from your point of view, to forecast that and then forecast the house price rises in the next 10, 20 years. It's very difficult. Yeah, I mean, obviously we have to use assumptions in terms of property growth. And again, we're relatively cautious with that. And then the modelling sort of does all the thinking in the background for us. Okay. Is it like an AI system you use? It's not AI, no. So we plug all the input in. It's got all the tools in the background to work out the inflation and forecast everything forward. Yeah. And every client's different as well. Some of them have got their spreadsheet and they know... This is what they spend on direct debits and this is what the kids cost them and this is what they spend on food. Some people haven't got a clue. So, you know, at the hour, help in the early stages varies quite considerably depending on the client. Yeah, I have clients that you ask them to fill out a schedule of outgoings, a monthly outgoing schedule, and they really don't know what the basic outgoings of the household are. So it could be like the water rates or the council tax, and I'll get it back, and it'll be like question marks, and they won't know. I did one yesterday like that, and I was trying to then guess and look at council tax rates in their area, because we're doing a four-mean, it needs to be accurate. So we have to sort of make assumptions as well about what their expenditure, and again, I'm conservative on that, because... I sort of over-assume what their expenditure might be sometimes because, you know, only today in the news, water rates are going to be going up by£168 a year per household on average. And you have to be quite careful when you're forecasting for the, you know, you put on the form a future cost. Well, you know, electricity and gas have gone up fourfold in the last three, four years. It's very difficult. We used to be able to put like£50 down for each and that would be enough. And now it's more like£200 down for each. And... It's because that person might not have any knowledge at all about what's going out of the joint account, doesn't have any visibility, or perhaps the bills are all being paid from their spouse's account. And it's shocking sometimes that they don't know what they spend on food. And it really makes our job quite difficult. And until we get the disclosure from the other side, then we get a true picture. But at that point, we've already had to do one for me. So we've had to make assumptions and then we get questions back from the other side saying, how can you assume that it's only costing this? I said, well, we didn't know until we saw the bank statements. He or she has had no visibility over what's been spent in this house and sometimes it's a bit of a shock. And only then can a financial advisor assist, really, because you need the figures of what the outgoings are, if particularly, say, the wife might want to stay in that home and perhaps she didn't know what the expenditure was. the reality might hit home that actually she can't afford to stay in the family home, like needs to be sold. And that's quite a common scenario initially. We often have to sort of centre check budgets as well. So we look at them, the budgets that Clients might present to us, we'll go through it, and often there's categories which refill are probably missing. A common one is maintenance on the house. People don't think about that because it's not a regular outgoing, but actually if you own a home, there is going to be regular maintenance that you need to account for that needs to do with your regular outgoing. We add that on our standard. schedule that we send out to clients we have that on there and sometimes they go what do you mean i'm like well if you had a roof repair once a year it would cost this and it's there's so many things that can go wrong your washing machine can break you might need a plumber your boiler could pack him you have to assume just like with a car as well you have to assume repairs on an on an owned car if it's not a lease or a where you've got any service package you need to issue and there'll be repairs or MOT charges. So the list is so long about what they have to think about and I think they really struggle sometimes in filling that in, which is why then I have to sort of guess what they might spend on a conservative basis. But until you get to that point, you really don't know what figures you're working with to have an idea about what the outgoings are versus the income. I would go to ask as well with... your reports how do you factor in longevity with men and women how do you work that into your reports we just do them both to 99 yeah I tend to go to 99 I mean you can also look at the office of national statistics you get the average life expectancy and then but we'd usually be cautious and go the kind of the higher level because you usually get three ages three eight years on that yeah so you'd usually go at the higher one just again just for cautious purposes so you've got a standard you'd go to 99 and you know which is good but for anyone yeah Okay. And priorities as well. So someone might come to you and say, well, my absolute non-negotiable is two holidays a year. It might be that once, you know, people having to maybe get a job and they haven't had a job before. So they might need to scale back on some of these things. Then once they've got a job, then maybe they can come back. I think some clients do really get it and they understand that the situation is changing significantly and they will need to cut back. and other clients aren't quite there yet. Yeah, we find this difficult to have those conversations, but for anyone in our space really, isn't it? We have to have those conversations quite a lot, or about going back to work, or increasing hours at work to be able to afford. And actually that sometimes, if you're not working in a case, but you can work, so the children are all at school, for example, it doesn't look great if you're asking for maintenance if you're not working. Even if you work part-time, does you wonders in your case and can help your case for maintenance because yes there'll be an acceptance that the only capacity just isn't there compared to the other spouse so the other spouse could earn six figure salary never going to earn that i've been out of work for 10 years perhaps don't have the same skills or go trying to get back into something they previously did no previous lie the salary is going to be quite low um but it If you do show willing to work, even part-time, and you're claiming maintenance, you have often a higher chance of success on your maintenance case. Yeah. And that's quite a common feature, and having those conversations about going back to work are really difficult. Really difficult. I think that is where the modelling helps, because if you're modelling someone's lifestyle and there is a clear shortfall, being able to say, well... Look, if you did get a job and you were earning this much, look at the difference it makes. And I think that does help with the reality check. Same with expenditure. If you're saying you need to spend this much, well, this is what it actually looks like and the money isn't there necessarily. But if you cut down to this much... then you can sustain your lifestyle. So that, I think, helps with the reality check maybe. Yeah. And we'll run two or three different scenarios, won't we? And sometimes with jobs as well, if you've got a job and you've perhaps turned X, this is how it's going to look. But if you could perhaps work a little bit more and then Y, then, you know, it's a positive effect on the cash flows. And it does help people kind of think about it. Yeah. Even increasing hours from three days to four days a week, you know, makes a huge difference. Yeah. it can do so that's something that we always look at as well with the assistance of yourselves and then the other side of things where we look at cases it's most involuntary disclosure and also when you're in court proceedings the court wants you to obtain evidence of your mortgage capacity to see what you could borrow. So whether you're working or not working, you still need to produce a mortgage cap capacity report, even if it says zero. You still have to provide one for the FDR hearing and the final hearing. And can you help people with mortgage capacity reports? Yeah, definitely. We write a lot. for courts, and again, for varying different types of clients, some that aren't working, some that are based on maintenance, because some lenders will take maintenance into account in terms of borrowing. Obviously, it depends how much that maintenance is and how long it's going on for as to what the lender's happy to include. But there is an option for that. When it's coupled with a job, it's seen as more favourable. But yes, you've got both. And then often we get asked to write and comment on the other side if there's a capacity report come in in preparation for the FDR from the other side we might get asked to write a commentary on what we think you know particularly if you're perhaps thinking well that's not really their mortgage capacity or perhaps might be a bit discrepancy in the values second time yeah that's great because that's Sometimes we get them back and we think, oh, that doesn't look right. You might have someone earning quite a significant amount and the more capacity is quite low. He's tactically low for the case. It's good to have a second opinion. Do the mortgage companies that take into account child maintenance, do they need a court order, do you know? Or can it be a child maintenance assessment in accordance with the child maintenance service as long as they're in receipt of it and it's going into their bank account? So it depends on the lender. Okay, and they all have different criteria. It's like with just standard borrowing with your base plus commission or base plus bonus, they all have slightly different criteria. So I would always, in a report, include a range of what they might be able to borrow. But yes, so some lenders want to see a stamped court order and others want to see the last three months of it going in. It makes more sense for them, and I'm not a financial advisor, but or a mortgage advisor, but from the point of view, from our point of view, a child maintenance order is only enforceable for 12 months in a court order. Then it falls back to the CNS, a government agency. So if lenders want a court order, it doesn't really mean very much. It gives them a year of security. You know, it depends if... the person that's paying is going to pay. If they don't pay, the order is only enforceable for 12 months, but then the jurisdiction falls back with the CMS anyway. And it is iffy because if the person that's paying ends up going self-employed, earns much less money or puts less through the books or is out of work completely, that just stops. So it is risky for lenders. I suppose maybe they'll lend on a shorter term. It just depends on... It really depends on the whole city more ways, shouldn't it? The way the person receiving maintenance is also working. Yeah, but their income's likely to go up. And it's supplementing it rather than the only... Yeah, you know, in single arms, if somebody's, you know, earning a low income, got high maintenance, you wouldn't be able to max out on the borrowing. Yeah, maintenance, because it's too risky. Exactly, because you get... We have lots of situations where... People apply to vary maintenance orders or people come to us because their ex has stopped paying and it's an enforcement application, whether it be spousal maintenance in that situation. So it is risky. And then even a change of circumstances for the payer. So if they have more children, it will reduce the child maintenance service rate for them to pay for their other children. So you just don't know. If you're a young family, that can happen. So, yeah, it's quite difficult, a difficult job for you and, you know, a lender. Yeah, because whilst you're looking for them to be able to have the ability to borrow, you don't want them to be able to borrow too much and then end up in a nightmare situation. Exactly, exactly. And then multi-capacity reports obviously prepare them and they can be used in proceedings for solicitors, which is really helpful. One thing I have... noticed recently in cases are mortgage rates affecting the ability of couples to separate, rehouse. They may have been on a low deal for a long time and then the rates obviously jumped up and they're kind of settling now at a level, but they're never going to be what they were. And a lot of people this year, again, will be coming to the end of those low 1% or below 1% deals and it'd be in difficulty if they're thinking of separating. if they're not thinking of separating, but if they're thinking of separating, even more so. So have you noticed that that's causing issues for lots of your clients in terms of being able to separate their lives and buy two homes, not one? Yeah, definitely, definitely. And, you know, you look back at some of the reports that we were doing four years ago and people's, you know, ability to borrow and what those monthly repayments look like compared to now. You know, you have people being able to borrow at 0.89 or whatever, and now... It's around 4%, ticky-tocky. So it is a huge difference. And it doesn't sound a lot, but it is on an average to large mortgage. That's a lot of money coming and makes it unaffordable. And I think actually it's trapping people in marriages at the moment. My sentiment probably isn't shared, but I do think there's a trend at the moment that the people aren't able to actually move on. Yeah, they can't actually do it. without a huge drop in life span which is what they have to then think about which is really the reality it's awful for them but I have noticed this January I've noticed it more so and there's not that drop I thought there would be last year with the mortgage rates and there isn't going to be probably this year either no they need to come down I don't think they'll come down I'm not I don't work for the Bank of England but you know I don't think we'll ever see sub 1% debt. No. But it'd be nice if it'd come down to 2.5%. People overstretched themselves. But they didn't think they were overstretching themselves when they were on 0.8 deals. And now the reality is hitting that it's a lot per month to sustain, especially if you think you're separating. And as you said, there's a lot of people coming out of those deals now. Exactly. Who are hoping that Reedsford are going to be a bit of a real crisis. And, you know, it's really difficult. and houses because of the rates aren't really selling. No. The properties aren't selling, so they're stuck. I mean, is that marital home still waiting for the property to sell? Both of them are living there. We have a case just like that, actually. And the house has been on the market for over 12 months. And it's now been reduced. The problem is you have a RICS report on a final hearing which says it's worth this amount. And actually, the reality is it's not sold. So you're dropping it. And then it's affecting the whole settlement. So again, your services would come in again to say, actually, how much can we actually drop this house so I could afford it? Yeah. to live and I'm finding it difficult where perhaps they've had an order previously four years ago whenever it was that says they're to receive a specific lump sum from the house which then crushes down what the other person's going to get so they're reluctant to reduce the price if it's a split on percentages it's easier and fairer but if you've got someone say well I'm going to be getting let's say for example there's 200,000 in a house and someone's receiving 150 of that Well, that's all that might be left if you're dropping your house price, just as an example. So that can happen as well. And then now let's talk a little bit more about pensions and how you can help solicitors with pension sharing. So typically in a divorce, you will have a situation where one person will have a higher pension. pension pot than the other, perhaps because they'd worked more or had a better job, or they're older, and that needs to be shared on divorce with the other person to equalise pensions in retirement. At the first stage, we may get actuaries to do a report on what percentage of the pension would need to be transferred to equalised pensions. There might be multiple pots. And those reports are really... difficult to read for anyone who's not an actuary they're really you know they're very complex and technical um and sometimes we need financial advisors to interpret them for us so is that something that you can do with clients yeah absolutely so pensions are sort of my forte um so yeah i'm very kind of okay at looking through the pension reports um understand like breaking them down and picking out the key points and helping explain that Sometimes I just go to the conclusion and think, I'll read that first and see, and then I'll read back through the whole report and try and make sense of it. But it's often the case I do need a financial advisor on the case. They're so lengthy. There's so much information in there. It's hard to pull out the key things. It is. Multiple calculations as well. Different ages. Sometimes you'll have a calculation for age. separating out the pre-marital pension versus the pension accrued during the marriage. So there can be four or five calculations in the reports, which judges do not like, by the way. The MP may still ask for multiple calculations. I understand why. Yeah, so that can be quite difficult. You get reports about 60, 70 pages long and they cost a lot of money to do. But you do need them. We can't advise on pension sharing. We can't, you know, we're not able to, we're not financially qualified. So we do obviously need help from pension actuaries or advisors and financial advisors as well. And I think it's highlighting that. Advantages and disadvantages of each option. Yes. And particularly when you might have someone where part of the pot's been crystallised, so part of it's been used or some of the tax-free cash has been used. All of that impacts what happens next. Do you ever find that one spouse, perhaps someone without much of a pension, had no idea that their spouse had taken such a huge lump sum at the point they could crystallise part of it? Yeah, and it's very difficult to have those conversations as well with people who have got the majority of the pension because part of it will have been accrued before they even met usually. And you do get it sometimes where the person without the large pension will sort of sit back and go, oh yes, they should keep their pension. They're attached to it. And also I think that particularly with final salary pensions, defined benefit pensions, where it's a guaranteed income for life, a lot of time people don't realise the value in those pension pots and how valuable they actually are. And so that's part of our role as well, it's explaining that actually there is a there's big value in that pension because you could have a situation where there's no pension sharing that then you've just got the state pension to rely on may not have full contribution to that either so they may not get the full state pension and you have um someone with a final salary pension multiple pots and can live very comfortably 60 plus and the other person's really going to struggle um And that's how I sort of explain it to people. Look, if you'd stayed married, this is the life style you'd have had. But, you know, you've been married for 30 plus years. Sometimes you're convincing people to seek a pension share, believe it or not. They're very much, I don't want to touch it, it's theirs. Other times it's very different. It's rare with pensions that you see someone, well, a couple, just, you know, willing to... go to an actuary and get a report to share it, very rare. Sometimes a pension's what's worse more than the marital home. Absolutely, yeah. And I think that goes back to the modelling as well. So being able to show the situation or a time and, you know, for people who are saying, oh, I don't want to touch the pension, that's okay, they can keep that. Or actually, yeah, this is the difference it will make. Or also modelling, okay, well, if you offset the pension... That works right now, but you need to be aware that in retirement it looks like this. So what would it look like if perhaps you bought a smaller property and retained your share of the pension? Does that look better overall in the long term? And it's then their decision whether they do that option or they do the, I'll have the big house now, less pension and downsize if I need to. And sometimes people, particularly if they're maybe still in their 40s and they've got 20 years to work, they're a bit happier to have Less pension because I think, well, I'm going to go back to work and I did have a good job before, so actually I've got time to put money back in that pension. But right now, a bigger home for me and the kids is more favourable. So everybody's situation is slightly different, whereas if somebody's kids have grown up and gone, then actually they don't need their bigger house, they need more to pension. They need more to pension. So it's the production of the pension advisory group report. They've got two reports now. I've noticed that judges are... Even on a consensual basis, when we send a consent order in which doesn't provide for adequate pension, they are rejecting consent orders on the basis that there's not adequate pension provision. More and more than I've ever seen before. And even if parties are young and have got 20, 30 years ahead of them in their careers and can build up the pension, judges are still reluctant to rubber stamp an order which does not share the pension that they've received. from their spouse that they've perhaps been in a marriage for say 10 years, got young children. Even in that scenario, a judge is very reluctant to proper stamp an order and you find yourselves how if you've got a client who's particularly set in their ways and has said, look, this is what I want. I want to keep more of the house now. I don't want the pension now. This is what is important to me right now. And you explain why. the rationales of the judge in the D81 form that we have to send in, which is a detailed form of the snapshot of what they've agreed and what their assets are. Even if you explain to the best of your abilities, still getting knocked back and sometimes asked to go to a hearing just so the judge knows that the person who's giving up their right to pension knows what they're doing. And that is called a mention hearing. And we have them more and more. That's really interesting. It is. I've noticed it quite a lot recently, more than ever. I think there's been, yeah, since the pension advisory report, it's just, yeah, pensions are just a hot topic, aren't they? They are. People realise now how important they are and what big value they can represent as part of the total pot. Completely. And there's, you know, there's, When we were talking about calculations before of calculating what someone earned by way of pension before the marriage and people tried to exclude that from the calculation, that isn't favourable with courts. So it's the Pension Advisory Group report because it says in the report that in a case where the needs require the pension to be shared. So perhaps the other person has no pension at all. So of course needs require the pension to be shared. The post and pre-separation accrual should not be taken into account. It's just a whole pot. It doesn't matter. And also the length of the marriage isn't given as much weight as it used to be. So if it's a short marriage, you're still looking at potentially receiving an equalising pension share. which is a big shock to some people. But unless you're going to try and agree out of court, you could be faced with the risk that it's within the possibility that a judge will order an equalisation of pensions. It's within the realm of possibilities, and that's the risk of litigation. And that report hasn't really helped those people who want to keep hold of pension, perhaps that they, in some cases, were paying into before their spouse was even born, when you've got an age gap. Yeah, in a couple, but that happens. I've had people say, people email say, I brought this pension into the marriage, but I owned half of it before my spouse was even born. That situation, and it seems so unfair, but if it's a needs case, then unfortunately it would have to be shared. And you just hope that those cases can sort of come to a deal without having to spend thousands getting to that point with a judge face with that reality and having to order whether that happens or not. And what we've seen with pensions as well recently is the delay in obtaining NHS pensions. Teachers pensions are still taking a long time. When I'm talking about that, I'm talking about the time it takes to wait for the cash equivalent to come through so that you can help work out what's in the pension and needs to be divided. So they're taking, I think last year we had one that took nine months on an NHS scheme to come through because they all had to be recalculated as a result of the case. some case law and therefore it was taking much longer. It's really hard and it really delays people moving on with their lives, doesn't it? They're just stuck waiting for pension reports and cash equivalency. It can take months. Even in a best case scenario, when you can obtain pension reports, it can still take three to four months. So you factor in public sector waiting times. It took us nearly a year on a particular case to get to that point. And then you're trying to negotiate at that point. And then if you have to issue proceedings anyway, you're really far down the line. So you're not ideal, but things are improving slightly. But with teachers' pensions, I have still noticed quite a delay on getting the reports back, the CVs. Yeah. I think often as well, people don't think about the pensions till nearer the end of the day. And so we've had a client recently and... You know, the assessment is basically agreed. And then it was, oh, we're just going to split the cash equivalent values. And then we pointed out that it was a defined benefit pension. And perhaps they should look into that in a bit more detail and get a report, which they're now doing. But they were sort of all ready to do the consent order. And now they're waiting. On an offsetting to that basis, yes, they want their cash. You just pay up a pound of that. Yes, half a pound. Yes, easily. And they can do that, don't they, or not? And it's really not possible, no. Some pension schemes are worth much more than they say all the tin. Absolutely, yeah. We've had, and also just with the CEVs that come back previously, probably pre-without for NHS pensions, we were getting second opinions on those. They were coming back three times higher because they weren't factoring in the CPI and the price increases. Yeah, so it was difficult to even just rely on the NHS scheme, yeah, and see these themselves. And at least that's what the actuaries will do. They'll look at the actual CE and then say, yeah, Make sure it definitely makes sense. The safest option is always to get some financial advice and an actuarial advice if needed. I think so, yeah. So that's something that crops up on most cases if the parties are willing to go down that route. So if they don't want to go down that route, we have to get parties to sign disclaimers because we can't be held responsible for money that they could have achieved in settlement that they choose to ignore. So... With that situation where you have got someone who's sort of thinking, well, I don't want to touch the pension. Do you forecast for them then what life would look like without it? You can get reality checks and then maybe they change their minds. Yeah, that's exactly what we do. Yeah. And say, look, this is what retirement looks like. Yeah. You know, we do forecast if they're able, if they're going to be working and saving towards a pension, we put all of that in. But yeah, it's just, you know, you might need to downsize before retirement to free up some money. But sometimes even if you do that, it could still be a shortfall. It's a lie. Yeah, because it's a long time. You think you're retiring in your 60s. If you're forecasting to 99, it's a long time to... Yeah, especially if the expectations of holidays and things are there and lifestyle and university costs for children and with the ageing. and people having children later, they're often retiring around the time that their children will be going off to university, and that's a huge expense to factor in. Yeah. I mean, university fees now, I think, going up with the loans, I think it's£100,000 for a course, and it's so much money sometimes. It's really expensive, and the accommodation, even if the child themselves gets a loan for the course, you've still got the accommodation, and the maintenance grants are on quite a low level. You know, not everybody gets that. And I think that expectation versus reality, yes, is quite a lot of conversations that we have. There are some that we're giving peace of mind to, like we said earlier, but a lot of the time it's about readjusting the expectation that the children might not be able to stay in private education all the way through. The holidays might need to change slightly, other type of holidays, because... the dual income isn't there anymore you've got to split that into running two homes I suppose it's just so important to get forecasting at the beginning from both the pensioners point of view and from a general affordability point of view about what life will look like and that merely assists with negotiations and in some cases you might have a case where there is the money there to do this but the other side perhaps is very reluctant to share things on an equal basis or share things at all or perhaps it's predominantly and you might have a business owner manager who a lot of the money's tied up in the business there's lots of money there could be a multi-million pound business shareholding could be worth millions but the actual cash isn't there straight away so we have situations where we might settle but it's on the drip so you'll have a lump sum by installments being paid over the five years and that's something to think about as well in terms of forecasting if you there's any uncertainty about that lump sum being paid or so it's When money is tied up in that way, it's often a result. Often the result is a lump sum, payable by installments or a series of lump sums. So sometimes the money is there, but it's hard to get at. It's just about finding creative ways. And if you can find those ways, cases can settle. What's really nice for us with cases, if a client is a bit beside themselves at the beginning, doesn't know how they're... going to work or how the maintenance, you know, how they're going to live on it and we'll run the modelling and really, we end up coaching them quite a lot as well, don't we? Yeah. And then once you've taken them through that whole process and they've settled and then seeing them again six months later and actually, oh yeah, everything you said, yeah, actually, I can live on this and I'm doing okay, yeah, and I'm holiday free and seeing the change in them mentally is really nice. Yeah, it's really good. And I suppose that means that you can help them throughout their life and they'll come back to you in years to come from Yeah, I think with a lot of clients, we start working with them in the beginning and then we work with them post-settlement as well. So yeah, once they've got their pot, whether it be a pension share or... capital amount we then work with them to get it invested to be put into the right pension invested in line with their time frame and what their plans are and generating the income they need sometimes in the most tax efficient way our work doesn't stop when they've settled in fact it carries on and we get to sort of work with them as their life progresses and they start their new chapter yeah it's nice and that's people say I don't know how you do your job but it's actually really rewarding because I see like you You see people come out of the other side of a traumatic experience and they're much happier than they were when they came to see me a year ago, whatever it was. And it is quite rewarding in that sense. And you get to live that, live it through with them even beyond that point of separation and finishing the consent order or the court order. You get to see them for much longer. So that's really nice. Say it is really good going on that journey with them, isn't it? Yeah. And also knowing when you meet new people at the beginning of the journey, being able to say, you know, this will get better and you will understand all these figures. And it's really overwhelming right now, but it will start to feel better. And that's part of our job is to make you feel less overwhelmed and to help you to understand what your future looks like. I think that's something I've got to say at the beginning as well. It's... Yeah, some people have already sort of gone through that trauma some time ago and they may have separated years before and it's, you know, they'll come to it. It's very factual, but others it might just be really recent and something I always say to people is that you'll look back and you'll think how far you've come and your life will be very different in a good way. It's always the case. I haven't seen anyone come out of it, you know, in a worse state than they started because it's the worst point when you... first to go to see a solicitor or anyone to do with separation. You may not have seen a solicitor before in your life, may not have been to a solicitor's office. It's really daunting. So it is a rewarding job in that sense. I love helping people like you do, especially people in that situation. But thank you very much for coming in to talk to me today. It's been really insightful. I really enjoyed our chat.

UNKNOWN: 41:06

Thank you.