Nova Scotia Court of Appeal rejected a pension member's claim to retain his pension undivided, affirming lower court's decision for an equal division
December 27, 2023
A Nova Scotia veteran must evenly split his pension with his former spouse after the province’s Court of Appeal upheld a trial court’s decision denying him an unequal division of property.
Mr. Davis had been receiving his Canadian Armed Forces pension for nearly ten years before separating from Ms. Harrison in 2020.
During the trial, Davis argued that dividing his pre-marriage contributions with Harrison would be unfair, asserting sole entitlement to the pension after their divorce. But the judge ruled in Harrison’s favour, noting that previous Nova Scotia cases establish that pension entitlements earned both before and after marriage are presumptively divisible.
On appeal, Davis sought to introduce new evidence to show that his pre-marriage pension entitlements had already been divided following his separation from a previous common-law spouse and that further division would breach the province’s Pension Benefits Division Act.
Nevertheless, the unanimous three-judge appeal panel declined to admit the fresh evidence from Davis’s common-law ex and dismissed his appeal, affirming that the trial judge’s reasoning was error-free.
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