‘I can’t get divorced as I can’t get my pension valued’ | Global News Avenue

“I thought I was done crying,” teacher Amy Goldsmith said.

“My world has been turned upside down in two and a half years and I desperately want this to be over.”

Like hundreds of other teachers, Amy was left in limbo, unable to proceed with her divorce due to long delays in calculating the value of her pension.

The court will need these to decide whether she should be shared with her ex-partner, otherwise a financial settlement will be almost impossible.

“I was confused about my relationship and naively thought I could get the papers and move on,” she said.

“I’m now in another limbo, feeling completely powerless.”

Amy, 43, is awaiting a valuation from the Teachers Pensions Department, which administers the Teachers Pension Scheme (TPS) on behalf of the Department for Education.

But it has struggled to keep up with demand.

The government calls the calculations “extremely complex” and requires dedicated staff to complete them, and says it aims to clear much of the current backlog by the end of February.

Freedom of Information Request – Submitted by Teachers Pension CETV Member support group Figures seen by the BBC show that as of December 2024, almost 2,000 teachers are waiting for CETV valuations.

The Ministry of Education said the number had dropped to 1,344 as of January 6, 2025, but new cases continued to emerge.

Amy, from Bristol, teaches history, geography and psychology at a secondary school in Wiltshire.

Since July 2024, she has been waiting for a document called a Cash Equivalent Transfer Valuation (CETV), without which the divorce is impossible.

Both parties to a divorce need to provide accurate information about their financial situation, including any property, savings and pensions, even if the division of assets is simple.

“I was initially told (the Teachers Pension Scheme) would contact me within 10 working days,” she said.

“But the people I spoke to later said they had no timetable for completing the calculations. So holding your breath is not recommended.”

Amy believes this procrastination made a highly emotional situation worse.

“I couldn’t wrap up and move on with my life,” she said.

“You don’t wake up one morning and say, ‘Oh, we’re getting a divorce.’ I’ve been through the pain. It’s stressful.”

David Quinton, from Gloucestershire, teaches construction skills at a further education college. He first applied for CETV in October 2023 and is still waiting. He cannot get divorced without applying.

He said: “This was my first divorce so I hadn’t heard of (CETV) before.

“It’s so exhausting. It’s taking a toll on me mentally because I want to move on with my life and I’m sure my ex-wife wants to do the same. It’s taking a toll financially too. I’m still paying the mortgage on a house on the house.”

David also racked up hundreds of pounds in legal fees due to the protracted divorce proceedings.

He made a series of complaints to the teachers’ pension scheme and his MP Simon Opher also raised his case in parliament.

The Teachers Pension Plan is one of the largest in the country, About 2 million members.

David said: “Some people are on edge mentally. They can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel.

“The Department of Education has given us fixed answers… but no compensation.”

Steve Webb, a former MP for Sunbury and Yate and pensions minister from 2010 to 2015, works for an independent pensions consultancy.

He said: “When a pension scheme works out the value of your pension, it has to do some complex calculations.

“But the court decision means that all of these public sector schemes have to do some extra complex calculations. They all need to agree so that the teachers, nurses and civil service schemes all work in the same way.

“So it takes time to come to an agreement, and then they need expert staff to actually do all of those calculations. All of that takes time.”

The judgment is also known as MacLeod Pension Remediesin 2018, found the government discriminated against younger members of the public service pension scheme.

This has led to the government making changes to the public service pension scheme and calculating valuations in new ways.

in a Latest news on teachers’ pensions The website was launched in December, and the service apologized for the inconvenience caused by the delay.

It said the first was due to the embargo on new CETVs between March and July 2023 to take into account changes in valuation methods.

The new rules came into effect after the McCloud ruling once the backlog grew, meaning in many cases two calculations would be required instead of one.

The Department of Education said the delays were not due to too few staff and that cases were being processed in date order where possible.

The company said it aims to clear “most” of the current backlog by the end of February 2025, except for some “small groups.”

Music teacher Steph Collishaw, 53, from Frome, Somerset, has been waiting for her CETV since May 2024.

“It makes me very angry because I have been working and paying into the pension scheme for 29 years,” she said.

“But when I needed to rely on information that was mine, it just wasn’t there.”

She said her divorce proceedings have been protracted and she is currently unable to remortgage because her husband’s name is still on the title to her house.

Like many people caught up in this kind of procrastination, she was skeptical of the promise that things would improve quickly.

“In another six months I could be sitting here still waiting for my CETV but I don’t know if that’s going to happen.

“You just want to live in an information vacuum with nothing to support you.”