When you walk down the aisle with the love of your life, you might dream of a beautiful home, large family – and growing old together care-free. But getting divorced can throw your future off course and ruin even the best-laid plans for retirement.
FirtUntangling your finances after a divorce doesn’t come cheap and neither does living alone. A moderately comfortable retirement costs an estimated £36,483 a year if you live by yourself – far more than the £24,295 a year it would cost for each person in a couple, according to research group Pension UK.
But more pensioners are facing single life in retirement, with the number of divorced women over the age of 65 soaring by 69 pc between 2014 and 2024, according to Government statistics body the Office for National Statistics. Women tend to take a bigger financial blow post-divorce than men, with their incomes falling by 50 pc in the year following a divorce, compared with 30 pc for men, according to research from Legal and General.
Money Mail has spoken to three divorced women to find out how their retirement has been affected when they found themselves starting again from scratch. And we quizzed a pensions expert to find out what you can do during a divorce to protect your finances and shore up your retirement.
‘Divorce forced me to sell the family home I’d inherited’
Maria Fuccio, 69, from Hampshire, always thought she would live out her retirement in the large childhood home that she inherited from her father in her forties. But when her marriage broke down 12 years ago, she had no choice but to sell up and split the proceeds with her now ex-husband.
This is because the six-bedroom home near Southampton was treated as a marital asset and therefore had to be sold, with the proceeds split in half. It’s a common myth that inherited wealth is automatically excluded in divorce. Although the home was brought into the marriage through inheritance, it was included by the courts because the couple lived in it together, and had taken out a joint loan to extend it.
Selling the family home for £670,000 left Maria with just enough, after the mortgage was paid off, to buy a one-bedroom bungalow for £189,000 in 2013. The retired teacher and social worker is now struggling to make ends meet and her retirement plans have been left in tatters. Maria retired early at age 57 during the divorce due to ill health and has spent her cash savings she built from working during the marriage on living costs.
Maria says: ‘I didn’t realise when we decided to divorce that I would lose my home. My retirement looks nothing like I thought it would – it’s been ruined.’
When her marriage broke down, Maria Fuccio had to sell the large childhood home she inherited from her father and split the proceeds with her now ex-husband
Lynne Burton aspired to live a carefree retirement spent travelling around Europe in a campervan. But these plans came tumbling down when her marriage broke down
Susan Hope, from pension provider Scottish Widows, says it’s surprisingly common for couples to be unaware of the full financial picture during a divorce. She says it’s vital for couples to have open discussions about their finances, including what assets they hold.
Maria says she doesn’t know if her ex-husband had other assets as they kept separate finances. They both earned similar amounts during their marriage, with Maria working as a social worker and her ex working as a mast-maker for sailing boats. But Maria struggled to build her savings as she spent more of her income on ballet and swimming lessons for their daughter Julia, now aged 29.
You have a duty to disclose your wealth and assets during a divorce and failing to do so can potentially lead to jail sentences in extreme cases and will mean additional legal costs for the person who conceals money during the proceedings.
However, a survey of people who divorced in the past 10 years revealed that one in four admit to not telling their ex-partner about the full extent of their wealth and assets during the break-up, according to Investec Wealth & Investment. The research found that men were twice as likely to keep quiet about some of their wealth.
Before her divorce Maria loved entertaining friends in her country kitchen, surrounded by five acres of land. She says: ‘On a Sunday, it was not unusual for 12 people to turn up. We had archery targets and clay pigeon shooting. I cooked banoffee pie at Christmas, and every day there were people around the table for a full dinner until New Year’s Eve.’
Like many pensioners, Maria is now relying on debt to make ends meet. The latest figures from insurance firm Sunlife show that almost one-third of retirees are currently in debt and pay an average of £630 in loan repayments each month. A few months ago, Maria took out a £14,000 personal loan to help her clear a credit card bill that she had spent on day-to-day living. Paying off the loan will take three years and cost £500 per month, around one-third of her budget.
With rising living costs, Maria says money is getting tighter every day and she has resorted to keeping the heating off. She says: ‘I keep the thermostat at just 18 degrees so I’m often cold and I’ve had to cancel my oldest dog’s pet insurance’.
She misses the life she had, saying: ‘My dogs and cats are my life, and they have more room than I do.’ She has five beds for her dogs around the house, and they often take over her own bed and sofa. Her two Chihuahuas, a three-legged Yorkshire Terrier and her two cats are a small reminder of happier days. ‘Caring for animals has been my whole life, and they bring me so much joy.’
‘I had to abandon my plans for a campervan and a carefree retirement’
Lynne Burton, 72, from Birmingham, had aspired to live a carefree retirement spent travelling around Europe in a campervan. But these plans came tumbling down when her marriage broke down in her late 40s. Instead, she found herself counting the pennies and waiting until age 70 to retire after making a costly financial decision during the divorce.
It was only when her ex-husband decided to remarry in 2020 that Lynne and her ex-husband got around to officially divorcing, nearly 30 years after splitting up in 1991.
When they initially separated, they didn’t have any discussions about dividing up assets, but Lynne kept living in the jointly owned home and they divided up their assets themselves, instead of going to court. With three young children, aged 10, five and just 4 months, Lynne focused on keeping a roof over their heads, she says, and didn’t look closely at the pounds and pence of their combined assets.
Although he had moved out, Lynne’s ex-husband continued to pay the mortgage until it was cleared in 2008, as part of their agreement, because they had children and he was the higher earner.
Later, when they divorced in 2020, the couple didn’t get legal advice and agreed that Lynne’s husband would keep his ‘much bigger’ workplace pension from his job as a circulation manager for the Birmingham Post and Mail, while she retained the family home, now worth £420,000, and her small workplace pension from managing an adult education centre for Birmingham City Council.
They each kept their own separate savings pots, which they’d built up during their working lives.
Like Lynne, many women instinctively prioritise keeping the family home when they divorce, says Ms Hope. But that means they can miss out on thousands of pounds if the husband’s workplace pension isn’t discussed. Pensions are often the most valuable asset in divorce – and typically the man’s is higher – but can easily get overlooked.
Just 23 per cent of women discussed pension assets during a divorce, according to recent figures published by Scottish Widows in their 2025 Retirement Report.
Ms Hope, of Scottish Widows, says: ‘When you’re weighing everything up, pensions can feel like that big bag of paperwork sitting in the corner, and it’s never really spoken about.
‘My advice to younger women is to treat pensions as a family asset, almost like the second family home, and have a clear idea about how much your own and your spouse’s pension is worth. Make sure you step back and get all the numbers.’
In Lynne’s case, she says lacking her own pension savings meant she had to keep working until age 70. Now fully retired, her workplace pension brings in £1,125 each month, while her state pension adds £781.
She says: ‘The money I get from my work pension keeps me going. If I was relying on just the state pension, I would have had to downsize and sell the house.’
Her cash savings she built up during her work cover an annual holiday abroad with friends to Greece and for meals out a couple of times each month. However, she’s had to let go of her dreams of an early retirement and travel.
But having worked for longer than expected, Lynne says she’s now enjoying her well-earned retirement. She initially dreaded being single in retirement, she says: ‘Being on your own, you think, what am I going to fill my days with? It’s definitely more expensive on your own too.’
But she says it’s better than expected. ‘Funnily enough, from the day I retired, I’ve never looked back. My friends said, “Oh, you’ll be fine” and they were right.’
‘I used my inheritance just to stand still’
Carol Naylor is still dealing with the financial scars of her divorce 40 years on
Carol Naylor’s ten-year marriage might have ended in 1985, but 40 years on she is still dealing with the financial scars of her divorce and a further relationship breakdown. Now aged 72 and living in Spain, she struggled to rebuild her finances on her own and, like Lynne, worked until the age of 70 to get by.
She says being married would make her much better off in retirement. She says: ‘Even if a couple don’t have huge pensions, life with two incomes would be a lot easier.’
Carol met her husband during her student days training as a teacher, and they got married just a few years later. But she says there were serious issues from the beginning, and she suspected him of drinking and being unfaithful. She says: ‘At one point I wanted to call the wedding off, but I was told it was nerves and everything would be okay – but it wasn’t.’
Despite contributing more financially during the marriage through her income as a teacher – her husband didn’t get his qualification and worked as an unqualified teacher. Carol was shocked to lose the family home after a lengthy custody battle following her divorce. She says the courts were prejudiced against working mums, and after a bitter battle through the courts, allowed her ex-husband to keep custody of their son, then just three years old, as well as their home. She walked away with just £4,000 in savings.
After her divorce, she continued to work as a teacher, but a relationship breakdown with a new partner left her renting and bringing up two daughters on her own.
Carol finally got back on the housing ladder in her early 50s in 2005, when she cashed in her £53,700 teacher’s pension and used it as a deposit for an apartment in Madrid, Spain after getting a teaching job there.
An inheritance of £96,000 from her mum in 2023 helped her clear the outstanding mortgage. She says: ‘If I’d still been married, that mortgage would have been paid off, and I could have used my inheritance to top up my savings.’
Fully retired since age 70, Carol now relies solely on the UK state pension – her teaching job in Spain and subsequent work as a carer between the ages of 60 to 70 didn’t pay her a pension. She receives £775 each month and says it isn’t enough to live on. Some weeks Carol has to wait for her pension to come through to afford food and she often survives on bread, milk and yoghurt for a few days.
She says: ‘The last year has been absolutely awful.’
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