The evidence
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General information, not advice on your own case.
A pension sharing order is expressed as a percentage of a specific pension, and that percentage is the output of a calculation, not a default of 50%. The research bears this out: where a pension not yet in payment was shared, the split was equal in only 22% of cases, and in nearly half of cases the person receiving the share got less than half. The right percentage depends on what you are trying to equalise (income in retirement or capital value, which give different answers), on your ages, on whether the whole pension is in issue or only part of it, and on what else is being divided. Because the order operates on a named pension, identifying the right scheme correctly matters as much as getting the percentage right.
A pension sharing order does not say “divide the pension”. It says something much more specific. It names a pension arrangement and states a percentage of the cash equivalent of that arrangement to be transferred to the other person.
The cash equivalent (often shortened to CE, and sometimes still called a CETV) is the capital figure the scheme provides to represent the current value of the benefits. It is the currency the scheme works in, and it is what the percentage bites on.
Three consequences follow, and each of them catches people out.
The Fair Shares? study at the University of Bristol looked at what actually happened in cases where a pension not yet in payment was shared. Among those cases:
An important caveat, and the researchers made it themselves: this is based on a small number of cases, around 142. Treat it as an indication of the pattern rather than as a precise measurement. The figures are reported as separate groupings and are best read as showing the shape of the distribution.
The shape is the point. Equal splits happen, and so do splits well above and well below half. If your starting assumption is that sharing means halving, the actual practice does not support it in either direction.
This is the single biggest driver, and it is the one most often left unstated.
Equalising capital value means each of you ends up holding pension worth the same capital sum.
Equalising income means each of you ends up with the same pension income in retirement.
These are different objectives and they generally produce different percentages. The reason is that a given capital sum does not buy the same income for everybody. It depends on the age at which the income starts, how long it is likely to be paid for, and what shape the income takes (whether it increases each year, whether it continues to a survivor).
The difference between the two answers is usually larger where there is an age gap between you. Where one person is several years older, the same capital buys them a different amount of income than it buys the younger person, so a percentage that equalises capital will leave the incomes unequal, and a percentage that equalises income will leave the capital unequal. Both cannot be true at once.
Neither objective is automatically the right one. Equalising income is often the natural aim where the purpose of the settlement is to make sure both of you can live in retirement. Equalising capital is often the natural aim where the pension is being treated simply as another asset in the pot. Which is appropriate is a question for you and your legal adviser, and the letter of instruction to the expert should say which one is wanted. If it does not, you may get an answer to the other question.
Age feeds in beyond the income and capital point. It affects how long each of you has left to build further pension, when each of you can realistically draw benefits, and what each scheme’s early or late retirement terms do to the figures. A five year age gap can move a percentage noticeably even where everything else is identical.
Where only the pension built up during the marriage is being shared, the percentage is calculated against that portion but still has to be expressed as a percentage of the whole pension, because that is what the order operates on. So a settlement that shares “half of the marital element” of a long career pension may come out as an order for a percentage well below 25% of the total. That number can look startlingly small next to the word “half”, and it is not a mistake.
A pension share is one part of a settlement, not the whole of it. If one of you is keeping the house, or receiving a larger share of the savings, or has a much greater ability to rebuild pension from future earnings, the percentage will reflect that. Needs, particularly housing needs and needs in retirement, run through the whole exercise.
Where each of you has pensions, or where one of you has several, the sensible answer is often a share of one particular pension rather than a bit of everything. Which pension is shared can matter as much as the percentage, because schemes differ in how a share is implemented, in what the receiving person ends up holding, and in what it costs to implement.
Because the order operates on a named arrangement, the paperwork has to identify it precisely: the correct scheme or provider name, the correct policy or membership number, and where somebody has more than one arrangement with the same provider, the right one.
Getting this wrong is a common and entirely avoidable problem. A scheme cannot implement an order that does not match a pension it holds, and putting it right means going back to court to have the order amended, with the delay and cost that involves. Where the pension has moved provider, or where the scheme has been taken over or renamed since the statement was issued, check the current details rather than copying the ones on an old letter.
It is also worth confirming the correct valuation date the percentage was calculated on, and understanding that the amount that eventually transfers will be the percentage applied to the value at implementation, which will not be the same figure.
Source for the research findings: Hitchings, E. and colleagues (2023), Fair Shares? Sorting out money and property on divorce, University of Bristol, funded by the Nuffield Foundation. The figures on the size of pension shares are drawn from a small base of around 142 cases.
This page is general information about the law of England and Wales. It is not legal or financial advice about your own circumstances.
October 2026
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