How your ex could help in your old age

How your ex could help in your old age

Women are failing to take advantage of rules that allow them to share their husband's pension on divorce, claims a report from financial services company Killik.

Only about one in 100 divorces involve a pension-sharing order, which divides a private or occupational pension between divorcing partners. Killik warns that this - combined with the fact that many women earn less than men and miss out on building up their own pensions through taking time out of work to raise children - will result in many divorced women facing pension poverty.

With the average pension fund at retirement amounting to a paltry £23,000 (just enough to buy you an annual income of £1,610), many pension funds are barely worth sharing. In such cases, it's important to make sure the value of any lost pension rights are offset by other assets: many women with children to look after are surrendering their right to share their husband's pension in favour of staying on in the family home.

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However, Suzanne Kingston of solicitors Dawsons points out that wives should not restrict themselves to considering the sharing of their husbands' private and occupational pensions. Wives are also entitled to share their ex-spouses' Serps or State Second Pension, and if they have not made enough National Insurance contributions themselves to get the full basic state pension, they may be able to substitute their husbands' NI records instead to claim a bigger pension.

For further details, see page 89 of the Department of Work and Pensions' Guide to State Pensions (NP46), which can be downloaded from www.thepensionservice.gov.uk

Parents who use washable nappies should not be discouraged by an Environment Agency report that claims there is little or no environmental advantage in using washables rather than disposables.

The agency admits the report was already out of date before it was released, as it had conducted its analysis on terry nappies. These were the most popular form of reusable nappy in 2002-3 but have now been overtaken by prefold washable nappies.

It also includes the environmental impact of soaking, the use of fabric conditioners, and even ironing (who in their right mind irons a nappy?) in its calculations.

As the Waste and Resources Action Programme points out, many reusable nappies can now be washed at 40C with other washing, do not require soaking or conditioner, and certainly don't need ironing.

More importantly, the Environment Agency's report does not address the problem of the sheer bulk of nappies sent to landfill sites around the country. The cost of this falls on local authorities, and therefore taxpayers, as well as the environment. Moreover, the government is required by EU legislation to reduce the waste it sends to landfill by two-thirds by 2020 compared with the 1995 amount. Surely reducing the use of disposable nappies is a relatively easy way to start?

The Environment Agency blithely hopes that disposable nappy manufacturers will use the study to 'improve the environmental performance of their products'. But why should they, when they've just been told they are no more damaging than the alternatives?

At least by using washable nappies, parents can adapt their laundry practices to do the least damage to the environment. Those who rely on disposables have no control over the impact they are having at all.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005