Journey to Return £Millions to Divorcees
The first two cases have now been settled and 860 are in progress...
PDF of press release with image attached
Divorce LifeLine is moving towards returning many millions of pounds to divorced women throughout the country. Two cases have now been settled out of court, with the next 860 in progress.
In 2011, Entrepreneur Roger Mahoney1 discovered that in up to 50% of divorce cases, solicitors were miscalculating the value of pensions, often by tens of thousands of pounds.
This has left many thousands of women out of pocket and Mahoney’s new company, Divorce LifeLine, is on a crusade to rectify this by claiming the lost funds from the negligent solicitors.
Now 14 months since commencing business, Divorce LifeLine has over 860 registered clients, each anticipating pay outs of up to £1 million from their divorce lawyers. The first two settlements have already been made out of court, where DivorcDL 2013DL 2013DL 2013DL 2013DL 2013DL 2013DL 2013e LifeLine identified errors in the divorce solicitors’ work that had unknowingly cost their clients thousands of pounds. The average value of those first two settlements was over £37,000 and the clients were both shocked and delighted at the result Divorce Lifeline secured for them
Mahoney explains: “Our research in 2011 showed that in as many as half of all divorce settlements in the UK since 20002, divorce pensions may have been incorrectly calculated by divorce solicitors. In fact they should employ an actuary to calculate the pension values3. An Actuarial valuation is more accurate and will usually lead to a significantly higher pension valuation figure. In one of Divorce LifeLine’s cases, this is £1 million more than the value assumed by the solicitor handling the divorce.”
Mahoney explains: “About 1.5 million divorces have taken place in the UK since the law changed in 2000. We expect that in as many as half of these divorces, the women may well have received an incorrect pension valuation when their divorce financial settlement was made. It is scandalous and we are now claiming back that money for our clients.
“As we are breaking new legal ground, the process is very lengthy and can take 18 months to settle. We are currently handling over 860 cases of miscalculated pensions.
“Our solicitors and barristers expect most of the claims we pursue to be settled. As more divorcees call us with their new enquiries, it will snowball and start to move more quickly.”
Divorce LifeLine can be contacted free of charge. Where claims cannot be pursued, or if Divorce LifeLine does not recover anything, there is no fee to pay for any of the investigative work carried out by Divorce LifeLine and its team of professionals.
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For help and advice, please telephone Divorce LifeLine
on: 020 8946 4409 or visit www.divorcelifeline.co.uk
Press Contact: Julia Arnold at Elite Communications:
Telephone: 01403 711 639 or email: julia.arnold@elite-communications.co.uk
Editors’ Notes:
1Roger Mahoney, 62, is well known in both the City’s Foreign Exchange and latterly in the care home industry.
Having left school at the age of 15, Mahoney worked his way up to becoming one of the leading lights on the Foreign Exchange by the time he was just 24.
He has since made his name in the care home business, where he has made a name for himself in creating and providing “homes that really do care”. Mahoney currently owns approximately 25 care homes throughout the home counties. He employs over 700 people, looks after xxxx residents and spends a day every week visiting them himself to “make sure they are doing what they are meant to do and that each one is a place I would be happy to live in myself one day.”
Divorce LifeLine was set up 15 months ago, when one of Roger’s partners realised that divorce settlements were being widely miscalculated. It has taken over a year, working with teams of barristers and actuaries, to set the business and legal processes up. The first two cases have now been settled and the company is anticipating up to 5000 (???) further cases to go through its books until the correct way of valuing a pension becomes common practice throughout solicitors’ offices in the UK.
To date, Divorce LifeLine has been able to help 80% of enquiries. Two cases have been won a further 900 have been started.
Roger has been through a divorce himself, which he claims makes him “understand and empathise with what people in that situation have gone through. He is very much a family man, currently living with his partner and two daughters in Surrey.
2Since a major change in the law in December 2000, pension sharing has become allowed. This means a pension provider can be told that a percentage of the pension of their member can be allocated to the members’ former spouse.
Specialist divorce and pension settlement consultancy, Divorce LifeLine, has revealed that around 750,000 affected divorcees in the UK are set to claim for tens of thousands of pounds in lost financial entitlements from their former solicitors.
Divorce LifeLine estimates that up to half of the 1.5 million divorces that have taken place in the UK since divorce laws were changed in 2000, may have not had their divorce settlement pension correctly valued by a financial expert. Many divorcees therefore may have lost tens of thousands of pounds as their matrimonial pensions were undervalued and these sums can now be reclaimed.
3A cash equivalent transfer value (CETV) is a current valuation provided by the pension provider. It ignores all the continuous ongoing values of a pension. The correct valuation of a pension is a complicated calculation and requires the services of a qualified actuary. As this is a costly and complicated process, it is usually omitted, but where an actuary is employed, the pension is, on average, 60% higher in value than originally valued on the CETV.
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Press Contact:
Julia Arnold
Sky Communications International
44 (0)1403 711 639
julia.arnold@skycommunications.co.uk
Divorce LifeLine
Tel: 020 8946 4409
www.divorcelifeline.co.uk
