Your Ex Dies: One Order Survives, The Other Does Not

If you are asking what happens to a pension sharing order when your ex dies, the reassuring answer is: nothing. A pension sharing order gave you a slice of his pension in your own name at the time of the divorce. It is your pension now, and his death does not touch it. It carries on being held for you, or paid to you, under your own scheme's rules, exactly as it would if he were still alive.

The answer is very different if what you actually have is a pension attachment order — the older arrangement once called earmarking. That never gave you a pension of your own. It only redirected part of his pension to you while it was being paid to him. When he dies, the pension in payment stops, and so does your share of it. One order survives him; the other does not, and which one you hold decides whether an income you may have relied on for years continues or ends the day he dies.

This page sets out how to tell the two apart, why they behave so differently on death, and what it means if you are a divorced parent whose household budget has quietly come to depend on that money.

The short answer: which order you have decides it

Two couples can divorce in the same year, in the same court, and split a pension in ways that look similar on the day — and then face opposite outcomes when the ex-husband later dies. The reason is that "splitting the pension" was done through one of two completely different legal mechanisms, and only one of them cut the tie between you and him.

A pension sharing order cut the tie. It carved out a percentage of his pension and moved it into an arrangement in your name, there and then, as part of the settlement. From that moment it was your money, growing or being paid under your own scheme's rules, with nothing left connecting it to his life or death.

A pension attachment order did not cut the tie. It left the whole pension sitting in his name and simply told the scheme to pay a set part of it to you when it eventually came into payment. Your money still ran through his pension, which means it still depended on his pension continuing to be paid — and a pension in payment normally stops when the member dies.

What a pension sharing order actually did

When a court made a pension sharing order, the scheme worked out a cash value for the pension and gave you a defined percentage of it, known as a pension credit. Depending on the scheme, that credit either stayed inside his scheme as a separate membership in your own name, or was transferred out to a pension of your own choosing. Either way, the paperwork that followed the divorce was in your name: a membership certificate, a policy, or a transfer into your own plan.

That is the tell-tale sign of a sharing order. You came away from the divorce with a pension you did not have before, with your name on it. It has its own retirement age, its own rules and its own death benefits, all governed by the scheme it sits in rather than by anything to do with your ex-husband.

Because it is genuinely yours, it behaves like any other pension you own. It has its own nomination form, and it is worth checking that form names the people you would actually want to benefit today rather than whoever you put down years ago — the same trap that catches people across every kind of pension, and one reason so many families find the wrong person is still on the paperwork. If you go on to live with a new partner, your own scheme's rules on unmarried partners will apply, and proving that relationship to trustees can be its own hurdle, which we set out in what trustees ask for to prove you were their partner.

Why a sharing order survives his death

The logic is simple once you see it. His death can only affect benefits that depend on him being alive or on his scheme membership. A pension credit does not. It was severed from him at the divorce and re-planted in your name, so from the pension's point of view he is no longer part of the picture at all.

Practically, that means if your ex-husband dies before you reach the age at which your credit pays out, your pension is unaffected: it is still there, still yours, still due to you at your own retirement age. And when it does pay, it pays regardless of whether he is alive. This is exactly the certainty a sharing order was designed to give, and it is why it became the more common route: a clean break, with each party holding their own retirement provision outright.

Like any pension held under trust, your credit is normally paid on your own death at the scheme's discretion rather than through your will, which is why it usually does not wait for probate — a distinction that surprises families dealing with a pension for the first time, and one we explain in the context of whether probate is needed for a private pension.

What a pension attachment order is

A pension attachment order — earmarking, in the language used when these were introduced — takes a different shape entirely. The pension stays wholly in the member's name. The order sits on top of it as an instruction to the scheme: when this pension comes into payment, divert a stated part of it to the former spouse. Nothing moves at the point of divorce; the order only bites later, when the pension actually starts paying.

An attachment order can be written to catch different things. It might attach a share of the pension income once it is in payment. It might attach a share of the tax-free lump sum the member takes at retirement. It might attach a share of a lump sum death benefit payable if the member dies. These are not the same, and an order can attach one, two or all three. The precise wording matters enormously, because it decides what you are entitled to and when — including what, if anything, reaches you when he dies.

Why an attachment order usually stops when he dies

Here is the hard part. An attachment order over pension income only works while there is pension income to divert. A scheme pension is normally paid for the member's lifetime, so when the member dies, the pension in payment stops — and with nothing left flowing, there is nothing for the order to redirect to you. The income you were receiving under an income attachment order therefore ends on his death. It does not pass to you, and it does not continue.

There is one important exception, and it turns entirely on the wording. If the order also attached a lump sum death benefit — a death-in-service lump sum, or a guaranteed lump sum payable if he died soon after retiring — that part of the order can still bite when he dies, and pay you the attached share of that lump sum. So the honest answer to "does an attachment order pay anything on death" is: read the order. An income attachment gives you nothing further; a lump-sum-death-benefit attachment might.

Two other features of attachment orders catch people out. The income share is usually treated as the member's income for tax, not yours, so it is taxed at his rate before you see it. And an income attachment order to a former spouse commonly ends if you remarry. The comparison with a widow's pension, which follows its own remarriage rules, is worth understanding if you are weighing up remarriage, and we set it out in how remarriage affects two different widow's pensions.

How to find out which order you have

You do not have to guess. The definitive record is the sealed court order made at the end of your divorce — the financial order, sometimes bundled with the consent order — which will use the words "pension sharing" or "pension attachment" (or "earmarking"). Dig it out first.

Then look at the pension paperwork that followed. If a sharing order was made, you should be able to point to a pension in your own name that arrived as a result: a letter confirming a pension credit, a membership certificate, or a transfer into a plan of your own. If you cannot find any pension of your own from the divorce, and instead everything still points back to his scheme with a direction attached, you are probably looking at an attachment order.

If it is genuinely unclear, ask the scheme administrator in writing to confirm what is on their file: whether a pension credit was created in your name, or whether an attachment or earmarking order is recorded against the member's pension, and what it attaches. Get the answer in writing, because the difference decides whether an income continues for your lifetime or ends with his.

What this means if your income depends on it

For a divorced parent, this is not an abstraction. If part of the monthly budget — the one that feeds and houses children — rests on an income attachment order, then your ex-husband's death is a cliff edge, not a bump. The money stops, and unlike a widow you have no survivor's pension to fall back on, because you are not his widow and the pension was never yours.

That is worth confronting while there is still time to do something about it. If you hold an attachment order for income, the options are narrow but real: understand exactly what it attaches, work out what your household would lose the day he died, and decide how to bridge that gap. Where children depend on the money, one common answer is cover written to replace the lost income if he dies, so the household is not left exposed by an order that was only ever going to last his lifetime. If that is your situation you can get life insurance quotes and have an FCA-authorised broker size cover against the income you would actually lose.

An attachment order is not the only legal arrangement that quietly ends the day a particular person dies; the same design catches families relying on, for example, a special guardianship order, which ends when the guardian does. The wider set of pension-on-death questions is collected in our guide to pensions, nominations and death benefits.

Scotland and Northern Ireland

Pension sharing and pension attachment are available across the whole of the UK, because the pensions legislation that created them applies UK-wide. What differs is the surrounding divorce law. In Scotland, financial provision on divorce is governed by separate Scottish legislation and is built around the principle of a clean break, so pension sharing — which gives each party their own provision — fits naturally and is widely used, while earmarking-style attachment orders were always far less common. In Northern Ireland the divorce framework differs again from England and Wales, though the same two pension mechanisms exist.

Wherever the order was made, the underlying distinction is the one that matters and it holds throughout the UK: an order that transferred a pension into your own name survives your ex's death, and an order that only redirects his pension income to you during his lifetime does not. If you are unsure which you have, the sealed order and the scheme administrator will tell you — and it is far better to find out now than to discover it in the week he dies.

Frequently asked questions

What happens to a pension sharing order if my ex-husband dies?

A sharing order transferred a percentage of his pension into an arrangement in your own name at the time of the divorce, so it is your pension. His death does not affect it, and it continues to be paid to you, or held for you, under your own scheme's rules. You do not need to do anything about the pension credit when he dies.

What happens to a pension attachment order when he dies?

An attachment order, sometimes still called earmarking, directs part of his pension to you while it is being paid to him. Payments of pension income under it stop on his death, because the pension itself stops. An order that attaches a lump sum death benefit can still bite and pay out, so the wording of the order decides what, if anything, you receive.

How do I find out which order I have?

Look at the sealed court order from the divorce and at the pension paperwork that followed it. A sharing order produces a pension credit and a membership certificate or policy in your name; an attachment order leaves the pension in his name with a direction attached to it. If it is unclear, ask the scheme administrator in writing to confirm exactly what is recorded.