‘I can’t get a divorce because I’m not getting the value of my pension’

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

“My world has been turned upside down for two and a half years and I very much want it to end.”

Like hundreds of other teachers, Amy is stuck, unable to move forward with her divorce due to lengthy delays in deciding the value of her pension.

It is required by the courts to decide whether it should be shared with her former partner, and is almost impossible to reach a financial agreement without it.

“I was confused about my relationship and I naively thought I could just file the paperwork and move on,” she said.

“I am now in another limbo and feel completely impotent.”

Amy, 43, is waiting for an assessment from Teachers Pensions – which runs the Teacher Pension Scheme (TPS) on behalf of the Department for Education.

But it is struggling to meet demand.

The government, which described the calculations as “extremely complex” and requiring a special role to complete them, said it aimed to clear most of the existing backlog by the end of February.

Freedom of Information request – submitted by a member of Teacher Pensions CETV support group and seen by the BBC – reveals that fewer than 2,000 teachers were waiting for a CETV assessment as early as December 2024.

The Education Department said that number had dropped to 1,344 by January 6, 2025, but new cases are always coming.

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

She is waiting for a document called Cash Equivalent Transfer Valuation or CETV from July 2024 and without it she cannot get a divorce.

Divorce requires both parties to provide accurate information about their finances – including any assets, savings and pensions – even if the division of property is otherwise straightforward.

“I was initially told that (teacher pension scheme) would be contacted within 10 working days,” he said.

“But then the person I spoke to said they didn’t have a deadline to complete the calculations. So holding my breath was not recommended.”

Amy feels that the delay is making her highly emotional situation worse.

“I can’t keep quiet and move on with my life,” she said.

“You don’t wake up one morning and say, ‘Oh, we’ll get a divorce.’ “I’ve been through a shock. It’s been extremely stressful.”

David Quinton, from Gloucestershire, lectures on construction skills at a further education college. He first applied for his CETV in October 2023 and is still waiting, unable to get a divorce without it.

He said: “This is the first time I’ve been divorced, so I hadn’t heard of (CETV) before.

“It’s exhausting. It’s taken 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 taken a toll on me financially too.” I’m still paying the mortgage.” At a house.”

David has also racked up hundreds of pounds in solicitor’s fees due to the lengthy divorce process.

They have written several complaints to the Teacher Pension Scheme and their MP, Simon Ofer, has raised their case in Parliament.

Teacher Pension Scheme is one of the largest schemes in the country almost two million members,

David said: “There are people out there mentally on edge. They don’t see any light at the end of the tunnel.

“The Department of Education has given us stock answers… and no offer of compensation.”

Steve Webb, former MP for Thornbury and Yate and Pensions Minister from 2010 to 2015, works in an independent pensions consultancy.

He said: “When a pension scheme decides what your pension is worth, it has to do some complex calculations.

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

“So it took time to agree on this and then they actually need specialist staff to do all these calculations. All of this is just taking time.”

decision, also known as McCloud Pension SolutionIn 2018 it found that the government discriminated against younger members of public service pension schemes.

This resulted in the government making changes to public service pension schemes and calculating valuations in a new way.

in one Update on teachers’ pension released On the website in December, the service apologized for the inconvenience caused by the delay.

It said the ban on new CETVs was initially imposed between March and July 2023 to take into account the change in assessment methodology.

And once the backlog was created, new rules came into effect after the McCloud decision, meaning that in many cases two counts were required instead of one.

The Department for Education said the delay was not due to staff shortages and that it was working on cases in date order wherever possible.

It said it aims to clear “the majority” of the existing backlog by the end of February 2025, apart from a few “small groups”.

Music teacher Steph Collishaw, 53, from Frome in Somerset, is waiting for her CETV from May 2024.

“It made me very angry because I’ve worked for 29 years and paid into the pension scheme the whole time,” he said.

“But when I need to rely on information that truly belongs to me, it simply doesn’t exist.”

She said her divorce proceedings have dragged on and she is currently unable to afford a mortgage because her husband’s name is still on the title to their home.

And like many people caught up in this delay, she is beginning to doubt promises that things will soon improve.

“I could be sitting here in the next six months’ time, still waiting for my CETV and not knowing if that’s going to happen or not.

“You’re just trying to live in a vacuum of information and there’s nothing out there to support you.”