Sarah Hawkins

Every September, Pensions Awareness Week encourages us to think about our future. We are reminded to check our pension statements, review our retirement savings and ask ourselves whether we are putting enough aside to enjoy the retirement we hope for.

They are important conversations, but I believe we are overlooking another one.

What happens to those carefully made retirement plans when a marriage ends?

At National Family Mediation, we are seeing a growing number of people in their fifties seeking support as they navigate separation. Around one in ten enquiries we received between April 2025 and March 2026 came from people aged over 50. That tells me something important. Later-life separation is no longer a niche issue; it reflects the changing reality of modern family life.

I’ve never been particularly fond of the phrase “grey divorce”. It conjures images of couples quietly separating after retirement, with grown-up children, mortgage-free homes and relatively straightforward finances.

That simply isn’t what we see.

Today’s fifty-somethings are often still paying mortgages, helping children through university, supporting adult children who cannot yet afford to leave home and, increasingly, caring for ageing parents. Many still have another ten or fifteen years of work ahead of them. They are making decisions about school fees, university costs, housing and day-to-day household finances long before they are thinking seriously about retirement.

Those immediate pressures naturally dominate conversations when relationships break down.

People come to mediation to work through the practical realities of separation: what happens to the family home, how ongoing financial commitments will be managed, whether children can still be supported through education and how both people can move forward on secure financial footing.

Pensions are rarely the first thing people mention.

Yet once the wider financial picture is laid out, they quickly become one of the most important parts of the conversation.

For couples over 50, pensions form part of almost every financial mediation we facilitate because they sit alongside housing, mortgages, savings, investments and debt as part of a complete financial settlement. By this stage of life, a pension is often one of the largest assets a couple has accumulated, sometimes worth more than the family home itself.

The irony is that while retirement may still feel years away, this is often the point at which pension decisions matter most. After decades of saving, pension pots have had time to grow, but they are rarely equal.

Career breaks to raise children, periods spent caring for relatives, part-time working, differences in earnings and, for some families, disruption to careers during the pandemic have all influenced how much people have been able to save. That means pension wealth can vary significantly between partners, making it one of the most valuable – and often most misunderstood – assets to consider.

Looking only at today’s financial pressures can mean overlooking the asset that will shape tomorrow’s financial security.

The full new State Pension is currently worth just over £12,500 a year, and not everyone will receive that amount. Entitlement depends on an individual’s National Insurance record, meaning career breaks, caring responsibilities and periods of part-time work can all affect what someone ultimately receives.

Even for those entitled to the full amount, the State Pension alone is unlikely to provide the retirement most people would hope for. According to the current Retirement Living Standards, a single person now needs around £13,900 a year simply to achieve a minimum standard of living in retirement, while a two-person household requires around £22,500. Those figures represent a basic standard of living rather than a comfortable one.

Meanwhile, the wider outlook for retirement is becoming increasingly challenging. Pensions UK estimates that one in five workers is projected to fall short of even the minimum Retirement Living Standard. The FCA says that around 2.8 million people are carrying persistent credit card debt, while it’s 2024 Financial Lives Survey found that more than 3.8 million retirees worry that their money will not last throughout retirement.

We are also living longer. The ONS says that a woman reaching the age of 65 in the 2030s can expect to live until around 89, while a man can expect to live to around 87. Many more people will live well into their nineties, with growing numbers celebrating their 100th birthday. Longer lives are something to celebrate, but they also mean retirement savings need to stretch much further than previous generations ever imagined.

Housing is changing too. Pensions UK projects that by 2030, more than one in ten people aged over 65 will be living in privately rented accommodation. For many, retirement will no longer mean living mortgage-free in a home they own outright. Instead, it may involve paying rent alongside rising energy bills, higher food costs and all the other financial pressures that have become familiar during the cost-of-living crisis.

Taken together, these trends paint a sobering picture. Retirement security is becoming harder to achieve at precisely the moment when later-life separation is becoming more financially complex.

Nobody likes the thought of sharing a pension they have spent decades building. That is entirely understandable. People have worked hard, contributed throughout their careers and naturally want to protect the future they have planned.

But perhaps there is another question worth asking.

Most people also do not want someone they once loved to spend retirement worrying about whether they can afford to heat their home, pay the weekly food shop or cope with an unexpected bill. This is not about suggesting that every pension should be divided equally or that one person should sacrifice their own future for the other. Every family is different, every financial picture is unique and every settlement should reflect those circumstances.

What matters is that decisions are made with a full understanding of their long-term consequences.

Too often, pensions are traded against other assets without fully appreciating what they represent. Keeping a greater share of the equity in the family home may feel like the better outcome today, but twenty years later it may be pension income – not bricks and mortar – that determines whether someone enjoys financial independence or faces financial insecurity.

That is why mediation has such an important role to play. It creates the space for practical, informed conversations about the whole financial picture, including pensions, property, savings, mortgages, investments and debt. Rather than focusing solely on who gets what, mediation helps couples understand the implications of the choices they are making so they can reach fair, informed agreements that give both people the best possible chance of financial security in later life.

These conversations are rarely easy, but they are essential. Every pound spent on unnecessary conflict is a pound that cannot be invested in retirement, housing or supporting the next generation.

For years, we have encouraged people to save more for retirement, and rightly so. But perhaps Pensions Awareness Week should also remind us that protecting our retirement is about more than increasing our pension contributions. It is also about making informed decisions when life takes an unexpected turn.

We cannot change the housing market. We cannot immediately reverse the cost-of-living crisis. We cannot stop people living longer, nor should we want to. What we can do is ensure that when relationships end, people understand the long-term financial consequences of the decisions they make.

If we are serious about tackling pension insecurity, we need to recognise that later-life divorce is no longer simply a family law issue. It is increasingly a retirement planning issue too.

Divorce marks the end of a relationship, but it should never become the beginning of avoidable financial hardship in later life. If this Pensions Awareness Week encourages separating couples to understand the true value of their pensions before making life-changing decisions, it will have achieved something that benefits not only today’s families, but the society we are all growing older in.

Read more articles by Sarah Hawkins.

About Sarah Hawkins

Sarah Hawkins is the CEO of National Family Mediation (NFM), the largest provider of family mediation services in England and Wales. A passionate advocate for conflict resolution and family wellbeing, Sarah has over 20 years of experience helping families navigate the emotional and legal challenges of separation and divorce.

 www.nfm.org.uk |  info@nfm.org.uk |  @FamilyMediationNFM