The Supreme Court’s decision in Standish v Standish [2025] UKSC 26 has given rise to how the concept of ‘matrimonialisation’ is applied in practice. Matrimonialisation concerns how non-matrimonial assets can become treated as matrimonial assets during the course of the marriage, and therefore subject to the sharing principle.
The Supreme Court explained that much depended on how the parties had treated an asset over time and how it was shared between them.
BS v HC [2026] EWFC 20 B
The decision of HHJ Hess principally concerned the extent to which the husband’s pension provision should be treated as matrimonial property, whether it had been matrimonialised, and therefore the extent to which it should be shared. Unusually, the value of the pension assets far outweighed the value of non-pension assets, with the pensions worth £3.06m and the non-pension assets worth £1.6m.
The parties married in 2009 and separated in 2024. They were in their sixties. The husband’s pension started in 1988, when he joined his company’s defined benefit scheme. It was a final salary scheme, although in 2012 the scheme closed, which meant that no further rights accrued after 2012. The Pension on Divorce Expert estimated that the pension would have been worth about £180,000 in 2009, when the parties started cohabiting. By 2021, it had increased in value to £2.15m. This significant increase was due to the husband making substantial contributions to the scheme during the marriage. By the time of the divorce, it was worth roughly £3m.
When looking at the matrimonial and non-matrimonial elements of a pension, HHJ Hess stated that the question is often referred to as one of ‘apportionment’. This issue was addressed by the Pensions Advisory Group in the report from January 2024 known as PAG2. HHJ Hess noted that PAG2 provides several methodologies for looking at the issue of apportionment: the ‘deferred pension method’; the ‘CE method’; and the ‘straight line method’.
After considering the different methods, the judge is then to identify the fairest way of answering the question of apportionment on the facts of a particular case by considering the results of the different methodologies. In the present case, each approach provided a very different outcome in terms of apportioning the pension acquired pre- and post-cohabitation.
HHJ Hess therefore referred to the earlier Court of Appeal decision in Hart v Hart [2017] EWCA Civ 1306, in which Moylan LJ acknowledged that in certain cases the facts made it impossible or very difficult to identify a clear mathematical demarcation line. In such cases, Moylan LJ stated, ‘the court does not have to apply any particular mathematical or other specific methodology. The court has a discretion as to how to arrive at a fair division and simply apply a broad assessment’.
In adopting such an approach, HHJ Hess came to the broad conclusion that 55% of the husband’s pension was accrued during the marriage. He then went on to say that ‘the search for fairness also requires consideration of whether a higher figure could be introduced by reference to matrimonialisation’. In practice, the court needs to consider the extent to which whatever portion of the pension started as a non-matrimonial asset has become ‘matrimonialised’. The wife contended that regardless of the origins of the pension, it had become wholly matrimonialised.
On the issue of matrimonialisation of a pension, HHJ Hess stated:
1. Rights in a pension, unlike cash or property, rarely become ‘mingled’ during a marriage, because they remain in the sole name of the person who earned the pension rights.
2. In a situation such as this, where the pension has not been drawn down, they remain an unmixed and unutilised asset, but are the source of future income.
3. The husband contended that as the pension remained untouched, it could not meet the Supreme Court test in Standish because it had not been translated into ‘actual use and enjoyment’. HHJ Hess thought that was too literal an interpretation.
4. A common intention to put the asset into use and enjoyment in the future could also give rise to matrimonialisation, if that intention was relied upon by the other party to his or her detriment.
On the facts of the present case, HHJ Hess did not believe that all of the husband’s pension rights had become matrimonialised and therefore only 55% of the husband’s pension should be subject to sharing.
RRE v JPR [2026] EWFC 7
Repeating one of the central issues in Standish, Sir Jonathan Cohen found that the transfer of assets into the wife’s name for tax reasons did not amount to matrimonialisation. Notwithstanding that those assets had been transferred into the wife’s name, they remained the non-matrimonial property of the husband.
Andrew Newbury is a partner at Hall Brown, Manchester
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