On divorce or annulment of your marriage, either party (or their legal representative) may apply to have CPP credits combined and split equally between spouses. Credit splitting applies even if one spouse did not contribute to the CPP. An employer-sponsored pension plan may also be split equally. In this instance, splitting may occur as early as when the parties are legally separated as opposed to after a divorce or annulment is granted. In general, the maximum amount payable to a non-member spouse is 50% of the pension’s value or monthly benefit.
Where spouses have sufficient family assets for purposes of equalization, the parties may not touch their workplace pensions at all, opting instead to trade other assets. For example, it is not uncommon for wife to keep the house and husband to retain his full pension.
