Your legal questions answered by Fahmida Ismail, Partner at Sydney Mitchell LLP. As featured in Worcester News, Sep 2014.
Q. What are the rules on pension-sharing in divorce cases? Can I claim half of a pension my husband contributed to before we were married? He joined a new pension scheme when he got a new job. We have no children.
A. There are no fixed rules about these things. If you were to go to court to sort out your finances the court would look at a wide range of issues, from the income, earning capacity, property and other financial resources of both spouses to their ages and the length of the marriage. All your assets would be taken into consideration, including pensions before and after marriage. Since there are no children it’s possible that the sensible outcome would be to split everything down the middle, but few divorce settlements result in a 50/50 split. You should discuss this in detail with a solicitor.
Q. The day before we moved out of our house we were supposed to go to our solicitors to sign the house over. In the event I received a phone call from them to say it had been done for us. I was surprised. Is there a legal procedure for this?
A. It’s likely that you did all the signing several weeks previously, when contracts were exchanged. That committed your buyers to the purchase, and you to the sale. What was happening in your case was “completion”, whereby the buyer’s conveyancer tells the bank to transfer the money immediately into the bank account of the seller’s conveyancer. In return your solicitor will have ‘phoned to confirm that he was holding the Transfer Deed you had signed earlier, and that it would be sent to the buyer’s solicitors in that night’s post. That just left you to hand over the keys.
Q. A dividing fence panel and post in the car park of our office block has been blown down in high winds. Our deeds say it’s a party fence to be “enjoyed and repaired and kept in good order by both parties.” But the business next door refuses to acknowledge any responsibility for it. What can I do to get them to chip in?
A. You could get an estimate – preferably two – for the cost of the repairs and write to them stating that you expect them to contribute half, as per your title deeds. If they ignore the letter you could sue them for half the cost in the small claims court. It may however be worth paying for the damage yourself rather than creating hostility between you and your neighbours.
For further information on any of the legal issues raised, please contact Fahmida Ismail on 0121 698 2200 or fill in our online enquiry form.
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