Pensions

Plans for a new automatic enrolment pension system have moved forward after the Government approved a large part of the design for the new system. Around 600,000 workers will be automatically enrolled in retirement savings schemes under the plans, which cover workers over the age of 23 and earning m

Three nuns who stopped receiving their Portuguese state pension after returning to Ireland have had the payments reinstated following an intervention by the Irish Ombudsman. The nuns had been without pension payments for over six months after returning to Ireland, having spent decades in Portugal pr

Claire Edgar, partner at Francis Hanna & Co Solicitors in Belfast, writes on new pensions guidance which has been published to help family law practitioners in ancillary relief cases. A recently published report provides guidance for how pensions should be treated in divorce. The Guide to the Tr

The Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission (NIHRC) has settled a case against the Department for Communities to back-pay state pension entitlements to a transgender woman. Frances Shields, who received her Gender Recognition Certificate in February 2015 and applied for her State pension in April 2

Lawyers from Matheson and Herbert Smith Freehills recently addressed businesses on the use of bulk annuities to reduce risk in defined benefit pension schemes. The event, co-hosted by the law firms and consulting firm Mercer, examined how factors including ongoing market volatility, historically low