ABSTRACT
On the death of a member of an occupational pension before retirement age the widow/widower is normally entitled to death in service benefits and, in the case of personal pensions, similar sorts of provision may be made available to the widow/widower. Although a former spouse is not a widow/widower for the purposes of a pension scheme, he/she will commonly be a dependant of the deceased spouse and may well be wholly or partly maintained by him/her under a court order or other financial arrangement. Therefore, it is obvious that he/she may well be entitled to some of the death-in-service benefits under the term of a ‘dependant’ which normally includes common law spouses, elderly parents, physically disabled dependants and any other person truly financially dependent on the deceased at the date of his/her death. However, this chapter is more concerned with entitlement of divorced spouses and, in particular, whether they can claim benefits under the pension of the other spouse on divorce. As will be appreciated, often pension assets accumulated by the spouses during marriage will be one of (or even the most valuable) assets accumulated during the relationship. The law on the redistribution of pension rights on divorce has for a long time been far from satisfactory, and, indeed, in February 1997 the government issued a White Paper on the question of pension splitting. However, pension splitting is a complicated and difficult topic. It is not expected that the White Paper or any provisions thereunder will take effect before the year 2000. However, pension splitting has been in existence in Scotland for some considerable period.
