Insuring the Life of your Business Partner: A New Year Resolution for 2022 Taking out an insurance policy on the life of your business partner sounds like a curious thing to have at the top of your 2022 New Year resolution list. But no matter how unusual this idea sounds, insuring the life of someone with whom you run a business or who is a key employee is sensible financial planning. It could be one of the best ways to… Read more »
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Cohabiting During Divorce Continuing to live with your partner after you have decided to end your relationship is not ideal, but more couples are finding themselves in the complicated situation of having to co-habit. Whilst most people want a clean break and to move on, it may not be as fast or straightforward if you jointly own the property in which you currently live and have an obligation to carry on paying a mortgage. Couples with children can also find… Read more »
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Olympic Gold Wins for Team GB: Planning Leads to Success Team GB has celebrated the success of several Olympic medal wins this week. The television coverage of the games has caught the hearts of the nation, and interviews with athletes and their families have given us all a glimpse of just how much work and planning goes into preparing for these events. But behind the medalists stands a retinue of coaches, nutritionists, physios and mentors who help to lay the… Read more »
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Saving into a pension for a grandchild or godchild. Locking money away until your child is in their 50s may seem a strange idea when there are so many expenses for a child that may be more urgent. Driving lessons, university fees and buying a home are all financial hurdles that will come first. The advantage of being a grandparent or godparent is that you are able to provide the things for a child that parents might not have the… Read more »
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Low interest rates: the damage to your Defined-Benefit Pension. Low interest rates set by the Bank of England have been great news for borrowers, but the steady fall in rates over the years has caused significant damage to Defined-Benefit Pensions, sometimes called Final Salary Pensions. Many of these work-based pension schemes have not performed well in recent years because of low interest rates, and they now have large shortfalls in their accounts. This means that those who have yet to… Read more »
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Emotions can run high when a marriage or civil partnership comes to an end. If you are facing divorce, then understanding how valuable pensions are in that conversation is extremely important. Pensions are often one of the most valuable savings pots grown during a marriage. Those who divorce later in life can often hold sizeable pension savings, and in some cases they might be as large as the value of a home. Yet when it comes to divorce, how to… Read more »
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After property, pensions are often the largest single asset to be divided in a divorce proceeding. The Welfare Reform and Pensions Act (WRPA) of 1999 introduced a new pension sharing framework for divorcing couples, but two decades later this continues to be a poorly understood field of family law. Research conducted by Scottish Widows in 2017 found that seven out of ten couples don’t discuss pension savings1 in divorce proceedings. With divorce lawyers also sometimes uncertain about how to tackle… Read more »
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