Will my soon-to-be ex-wife be entitled to any pension I earn after our Florida divorce?

Pensions are considered assets in a divorce action. Some assets are marital assets and some assets are non-marital assets. Non-marital assets go to the party who currently owns them in their entirety. Marital assets get equally divided between the parties.

Now, pensions can be sometimes entirely marital, if they’re earned during the marriage; or entirely non-marital, if they existed and were earned prior to the marriage. Or sometimes, pensions are hybrids, where some of it is earned prior to the marriage, and some of it during the marriage. In general, those portions of pensions that are earned during the marriage are considered marital assets which can be equally divided during the divorce process. That doesn’t mean they must be divided. They can be awarded in their entirety to one side, but the marital component which could have gone to the other side should be compensated with some other asset so that marital assets, as a whole, are divided equally between the parties.

Naturally, anything that occurs can be affected by an agreement between the parties, which a court will almost always sign off on.