It is just over a year since the publication of the Pension Advisory Group’s ground-breaking guidance on the treatment of pensions on divorce, to which Joanna Miles was a key contributor, and its impact to date has been far-reaching. The report has been featured in a wide range of general and specialist media, recently including the New Law Journal and on the Financial Times’ Advisor website. Its emerging impact on legal practice and the development of the law is also clear, the report having been viewed and downloaded thousands of times and cited with approval in three reported cases. Most important, especially for parties to ‘everyday’ rather than high-value divorces, have been the cases accepting the guide’s position that it is not generally possible to ring-fence pension assets acquired outside the period of the marriage itself, in line with the general approach to treatment of all other classes of property in ‘needs-based’ cases.
Work is currently ongoing to develop a lay-guide to pensions for divorcing couples and to extend the reach of the PAG’s work to a wider public.