Divorce ends a marriage. It does not end the claim on your pension.

The Office for National Statistics published its divorce figures for 2025 on 23 September 2026. There were 105,961 divorces and dissolutions in England and Wales — 105,002 divorces and 959 civil partnership dissolutions — which is 297 more than the year before. The opposite-sex marriages that ended had lasted a median of 13.0 years, the longest since the series began in 1963. Civil partnership dissolutions ran longer still: 13.7 years for male couples, 13.6 for female.

Longer marriages mean larger pensions on the table. But the divorce and the money are two separate pieces of paperwork, and ending the marriage does not end the claim on a pension — only a court order does that. GOV.UK is blunt about the gap: “If your agreement is not legally binding, a court cannot enforce it if there are any issues later.” A settlement shaken hands on over a kitchen table is not a settlement.

There are three ways to handle a pension, and they are not priced the same.

What each route costs to put in place

Route	What happens to the pension	What it costs to set up
Pension sharing order	A percentage moves across into the other person’s own pension	£62 court fee, plus the scheme’s charge for the valuation and its charge for implementing the order
Offsetting	Untouched — the other person takes more of the house or savings instead	£62 court fee, no scheme charge, and no formula either
Leave the pensions alone	Each keeps their own	Nothing now, and nothing settled

The £62 is the court fee for a consent order, which is what turns an agreement into something a judge has approved. A judge will approve it “if they think it’s fair”, and can ask for changes if not. Scheme charges are separate and vary: the NHS Business Services Authority reviews its own every year, and they may rise on 1 April.

What “one in ten” means

The Fair Shares study at the University of Bristol, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, surveyed more than 2,400 divorcees to build what the Nuffield Foundation called “the first detailed, fully representative picture of the position in England and Wales”. Its pension finding is narrower than it is usually quoted: only one in ten divorcees with a pension yet to be drawn had made an agreement for pension sharing.

The rest of the picture is the same shape. The median divorcing couple held £135,000 in total assets — home and pensions included, debts deducted. Only about a third finalised their finances through a court order. Just two in five used a lawyer for information, advice or support.

So the common outcome is not a deliberate decision to offset. It is nobody dealing with the pension.

If the pension is an NHS one

The court works from a cash equivalent transfer value — the total value of the pension benefits held in the scheme — requested from the NHS Business Services Authority on form PD1. There is a charge, and no valuation is provided for anyone with less than two years of qualifying membership. English, Welsh and Northern Irish orders state a percentage; a Scottish order states a cash sum. Once the scheme has everything it needs, it has four months to implement the order. Our page on NHS pension contributions sets out what is being paid in, band by band.

What the answer turns on

Four things decide this, and one of them cannot be known yet.

• What the valuation actually measures. A cash equivalent transfer value is a transfer price. It is not the income a career-average NHS or council pension will pay, so two pensions with the same figure on the paperwork are not worth the same in retirement.
• Whose record has the gaps. Years out for children, part-time hours and career breaks land on one person’s pension and not the other’s — and offsetting a house against a pension compares an asset you can sell with an income you cannot.
• Which bits of the State Pension are in scope. The new State Pension “cannot be subject to a share order”. A court can share an Additional State Pension, and where proceedings began on or after 6 April 2016 it can share a protected payment — the part paid on top of the standard rate. Nothing else in the State Pension can be split.
• Not yet known: what the pension will be worth. That depends on pay and inflation after the order is made, which is exactly what nobody can see in advance.

We do not tell you which route to take, and neither does the law — a judge only has to be satisfied the split is fair. What the figures published this week show is how many people reach that fork every year, and how few of them use the pension half of it.

Where these figures come from

• Divorces and dissolutions in England and Wales: 2024 and 2025 — Office for National Statistics
• Fair Shares? Sorting out money and property on divorce — University of Bristol
• A break-down of new evidence on financial settlements in divorce — Nuffield Foundation
• Money and property when you divorce or separate: If you agree — GOV.UK
• The new State Pension: Inheriting or increasing State Pension from a spouse or civil partner — GOV.UK
• Divorce or dissolution of a civil partnership and your pension — NHS Business Services Authority
• What is pension sharing? — NHS Business Services Authority
• What are the charges for pension on divorce (POD) or dissolution of a civil partnership? — NHS Business Services Authority

Every figure traces to a dated document — the line this section is named after. If one here is wrong, tell us and it gets fixed publicly. Work out your own figures.