Pension company misled me

I do think on the basis of what you said that there was misleading information given to you. But I think in this thread you have already given two overlapping reasons for the delay in the marriage.
mitchell said:
A major factor in these decisions was a glossy "bespoke" brochure supplied to me that stated unambiguously that should I marry before I retire and then die, my wife would get half my pension.
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mitchell said:
basically because I knew I was going to be made redundant, I put my life on hold including my forthcoming marriage.
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It would have seemed very prudent to postpone when you were not earning at the time. But if you had already made bookings there would be cancellation clauses and fees.

You also may have been acutely aware of the impact of marriage and your wife’s pension entitlements as it sounds as if your life expectancy is shorter than average (very sorry to hear that)
mitchell said:
. I suppose I don't expect myself to live to retirement.
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So your case to the FSPO should be based on the facts and the evidence that you can produce.

Can you prove you cancelled a planned wedding.
Can you demonstrate the pension information given to you then informed your decision. (Did you email it to your girlfriend and say, see what they say here, it won’t impact your pension if we delay getting married).
Can you show that your potential shorter life span influenced your thinking about ensuring your spouse would not loose out on you pension if you were not around.

If you can prove a direct link to your actions from this brochure, and the factors you took into account to postpone the wedding, then I do think you have a case. Whether that is 100% or 20% you will have to make your best estimate. If you were influenced 50% by the brochure, and you anticipate your wife will live 20 years beyond you, then you can propose a figure based on your model.
 
Fortune said:
I wonder would it be wise to take a transfer value from the DB scheme to a DC scheme or a PRB/BOB which would be able to provide benefits to a spouse/dependants on death?
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It might well be. But of course, as matters stand, the transfer value offered will be based on the value of entitlement to a pension for the OP only, and will not include the value of an entitlement to a survivor's pension for the OP's wife. So the OP should resolve the dispute over his entitlements on the best terms he can before taking a transfer value.
 
"My partner and I postponed a major life decision on foot of a blurb on an occupational pension statement I received. I never bothered to research or corroborate what it said even though I knew it was a very important matter. I now want the pensions company to compensate for my mistake."

The OP hasn't a shadow of a case.
 
If I was the pension company, I would argue that there was no need to postpone the marriage due to redundancy....an expensive wedding postponement would be prudent yes, due to the potential costs and uncertainty, but a legal marriage would have been possible for a very small fee. A religious ceremony or a civil one would be similar in costs if a simple ceremony. Be prepared to argue against that if needed.
 
T McGibney said:
"My partner and I postponed a major life decision on foot of a blurb on an occupational pension statement I received . . .
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This wasn't a "blurb"; it was a benefit statement, which is a document to be taken very seriously indeed, and on which a scheme member should be entitled to expect he can rely. And (we don't know this) if it was a benefit statement given to the OP in the context of his impending redundancy and the choices he might make, it becomes all the more serious.

There's a whole host of facts we simply don't know yet (not least, what else might have been said in the benefit statement) so I'm not saying that this is an open and shut case. But we do have an extract from a benefit statement produced by the scheme administrators which is not just ambiguous or unclear; it's simply wrong. There's a whole body of law on negligent misrepresentation and the remedies available for it; this looks, on the face of it, like a classic negligent misrepresentation.
 
The Ombudsman upheld Charlotte’s complaint that she was given misleading information by her employer but noted that the Office could only direct a pension provider to correct the financial loss experienced by a member under a scheme. However, the employer had made an offer of an ex-gratia payment of €500 to Charlotte, which was still open for her to accept. The Ombudsman also referred the decision to the Pensions Authority for any action it found necessary.


Above was the decision OP referenced earlier. The Fspo accepted there was misrepresentation ( it was about a tax free lump sum they had erroneously made reference to in a letter to the complianant) but the Fspo seem to indicate that they will only intervene when there is a loss suffered under the terms of the scheme. ( I guess an example may be if someone was not actually being paid the correct pension under the scheme rules). You have not suffered a loss under the terms of the scheme so likely a similar answer will follow. Will the 3500 still be available as an offer after the Fspo decision comes out or is it dependent on dropping the case now ?
 
It is a poorly phrased sentence which makes it a bit ambiguous but to me, you have interpreted it incorrectly by ignoring the initial part of the sentence.

If you left service at the date of this statement you would become entitled to:
And, if you are married or in a civil partnership (before retirement), an adult dependants pension on death after retirement of:
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It seems clear to me that you must be married at the date of leaving service. The "before retirement" which admittedly is poorly used, seems to be an attempt to further distinguish that your death must be after retirement.


mitchell said:
I postponed my wedding and took redundancy.
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This would imply that it was voluntary redundancy so you chose to take this course of action. Could you have continued working?

I think it is a very long shot to try claim any further loss as you suggest. Redundancies happen quickly so you would have to be able to show that your wedding was booked with a date before termination and that you can prove you cancelled everything as soon after redundancy was announced.

That's a small window of time and from what you have posted so far, I don't think you can show that. Maybe you can but we don't have all the dates/facts.

If you had planned a big wedding then you would have lost a lot of deposits cancelling so close to the event. If it was a small wedding, why did you not go ahead with it?

It seems odd that you would use that one sentence as the reason for postponing a wedding. It would be a lot more logical that you postponed at the time because of the redundancy itself
 
I get that you were weighing up the implications of getting married or postponing the wedding then redundancy would be a feature. But if you felt that getting married before you left the pension scheme was important you probably would have rushed to get married before your unemployment finished. Assuming there was a time period when you were looking at all the costs etc
No idea how you’d prove that you’d have decided differently if you’d read the detailed rules rather than this statement which is fairly clear, marry before retirement.
 
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mitchell said:
I discovered two years ago that the small print of the pension rules state that I .ust be married before I left the company.
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Is all of the rest irrelevant since the OP was actually told, just didn't read it and therefore wasn't aware he was told? That's not a criticism, just a fact. after all, who reads through all the small print on anything, whether it is pensions or any insurance product we buy.

I do get the blue blurb is misleading but without seeing the entire document, it's meaningless without understanding the context, any disclaimers etc that would be in place.
 
Interesting, in my case my employer pension plan (also DB pension) booklet state (See the portion in bold)


However it also have another section when you read it in its entirety, it would be construed as/implied you must be married before you leave service because there is no provision for "married after you leave service"


I think OP need to refer to his employer's pension plan booklet (Not pension statement) and read it in its entirety. It should be much clearer.
 
Steven Barrett said:
Will they ever suffer a loss seeing as it is the loss of a spouse's pension that is the loss?
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The point is that they were not married and therefore have no entitlement under the rules. This is the point the Fspo are making. They made similar reference in their annual report issued this week in respect of pension scheme complaints . OP claim is for a misrepresentation which will not therefore be dealt with by the Fspo.
 
The OP is married now, and if he seeks a transfer value now the amount offered will be less than would be offered if he had married before leaving service. So, yeah, there is a loss — the loss is the difference between the two transfer values.

The question is whether the loss was caused by the misprepresentation — is the reason that the employee didn't marry before leaving service that he was told he didn't need to, because he could secure the spouse's pension by marrying at any time before retiring? That's going to be a matter for evidence.

And, assuming that is proven, there'll be a second issue. Intervening between the misrepresentation about the benefits the scheme provides and the employee's request for a transfer value was the employee's decision to defer his marriage — a decision motivated by his then impending redundancy. The penson administrators will argue that these intervening events — the redundancy and the consequent decision to defer marriage — mean that there is too much distance between the misrepresentation and the loss; the loss is too remote; they are not liable.
 
Let's put it another way, the Fspo say they will only intervene when the rules of the scheme have not been adhered to. This is not the case here.
OP can of course pursue a claim.in the courts but that is not the question posed in this thread.
 
JoeRoberts said:
the Fspo say they will only intervene when the rules of the scheme have not been adhered to
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Can you link to the actual decision in which the FSPO says this? Not doubting you, but I want to read more about this.

If it's true that the only conduct the Pensions Ombudsman can award a remedy for is failure to adhere to the rules of the scheme, that's an extraordinarily narrow power to give any obmbudsman. The general idea with ombudsmen is that they have a broad power to investigate, and provide remedies for, "maladministration", which is a much wider concept.

In this case, you could try to bring the claim within that very narrow jurisdiction by saying that, in issuing a benefit statement which represented that the OP would qualify for a spouse's pension so long as he married before retirement, the administrator was not adhering to the rules of the scheme, which in fact only provided a spouse's pension so long as he married before retirement or earlier leaving service.
 
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