What should be in a letter of instruction to a pensions expert?

General information, not advice on your own case.

When you appoint a pensions expert, you send a letter of instruction, the document that tells them exactly what to value and what questions to answer. It is more important than it looks: an expert can only do what they are asked, so a vague or incomplete instruction produces a report that misses the point, and a well-framed one gets you an answer you can actually settle on.

A good instruction covers:

Which pensions to include. List every pension both of you hold, with the scheme names and, where possible, reference numbers. Decide whether to include small pensions (each one adds cost) and whether to include the State Pension, which can differ significantly between two people and is often worth including where their records are very different.

What you want the expert to work out. Be explicit about the goal. The two most common are:

• equalising income: sizing the share so you both have a similar pension income in retirement; and
• equalising capital: sizing the share so the value of the pensions (and any lump sums) is equal.

They can give different answers, so say which you want, or ask for both and decide afterwards.

Over what period. Whether the calculation should cover the pensions built up over the whole of the working lives, or only over the period of the marriage (or from cohabitation), the “marital” portion. This matters most in shorter marriages and where a lot was built up before or after the relationship.

The assumptions that matter. Retirement ages, whether to allow for the State Pension, and how to treat any health issues that could affect life expectancy. You don’t have to be an expert on these, but a good instruction either states them or asks the expert to advise.

Whether you want implementation advice. Getting the pension sharing order worded correctly, and put into effect correctly, is a distinct piece of work from the valuation. Say whether you want it covered.

Single joint expert or not. If you are both instructing one expert jointly (usually the cheapest and cleanest approach), the instruction needs to be agreed between you, both of you sign up to the same questions, and both of you should be copied on everything, so the process is transparent.

Getting this right is fiddly, which is exactly what the letter-of-instruction tool is built for. Rather than draft it from scratch, the guided builder walks you through each of these decisions and produces an instruction the expert can act on. [Link: PODE Instruct : the letter of instruction builder]

If you are not yet sure whether you need an expert at all, start with the “Do I need a PODE?” tool.

July 2026