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If a pension that is already in payment is shared on divorce, the member can keep receiving the full amount for a while, and then be asked to pay some of it back. Here is why that happens, and what to expect.
Home › Resources › Pension sharing clawback: why a scheme may ask for money back
General information, not advice on your own case.
When a pension that is already being paid is shared, the member's pension is reduced with effect from a set date (the valuation, or "transfer", day). But schemes do not make that reduction instantly: they have a period, usually up to four months, to put the share into effect. During that gap the member normally carries on receiving their full, unreduced pension, including the slice that now belongs to their ex-spouse. Once the share is finally implemented, the scheme corrects the pension and recovers the amount that was overpaid in the meantime. That recovery is what people mean by "clawback".
A pension in payment keeps paying at the old rate until the scheme actually processes the reduction, and the reduction is backdated. So the longer implementation takes, whether that is the normal four-month window or a longer delay caused by missing paperwork or unpaid fees, the larger the overpayment that builds up, and the larger the sum the scheme later reclaims.
It falls on the member, the person whose pension is being shared. They may have received, and spent, money that was never really theirs, and then face a demand to repay it out of a pension that has just been reduced. It is an unwelcome surprise precisely when finances are already stretched.
Generally, yes. A scheme is entitled to recover a pension it has overpaid, and the Pensions Ombudsman has repeatedly upheld that entitlement, while holding schemes to account for how and how quickly they go about it. There are limits and defences worth knowing: recovery is normally capped by the Limitation Act at roughly the last six years, and in some cases a "change of position" defence can reduce what is recoverable where the money was genuinely spent in good faith. The amount, the period claimed, and the way it is being recovered are all fair to question.
Clawback is not the same as the loss of value that can happen when a defined benefit pension is shared on its transfer value rather than its true worth. That is "value leakage", and it is dealt with separately. See the case study on the value that vanishes on sharing, and the main pension sharing guide.
July 2026
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