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Filling in the pension rights adjustment questionnaire: what matters
Shortly after the divorce application is served, an official form lands in the letterbox: the questionnaire on the pension rights adjustment. It looks like administrative routine and is in truth the only place in the whole proceedings where you can noticeably influence the duration. This article shows how to fill it in completely.
Karcher Rechtsanwälte in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, focusing on uncontested divorce and international family law. Advice in German, English and Spanish.
Part of our guide Pension rights adjustmentWhy this form decides months
The pension rights adjustment runs of the court’s own motion: the family court carries it out without anybody having to apply for it (§ 1 VersAusglG). For that it has to know which entitlements it should ask about at all, and that information comes from you.
Exactly here arises the bottleneck that determines the duration in almost every set of divorce proceedings. The court writes to the pension providers named, waits for their replies, follows up where things are unclear and sets a hearing date only once everything is in. Where an entitlement is missing, that chain starts over for it.
The questionnaire is the only place in the proceedings where the pace is in your hands.
How that affects the overall duration is shown by how long does a divorce take?.
What form V10 is
After the divorce application has been served, the court sends the questionnaire on the pension rights adjustment to both spouses, designated uniformly across Germany as form “V 10”. It is also freely available on the justice authorities’ forms portal, so anyone who wants can look at it beforehand.
Cooperation is prescribed by procedural law: participants are obliged to comply with the court’s requests and orders and to perform the acts of cooperation necessary to establish the entitlements (§ 220 FamFG). It also helps you: the adjustment takes place anyway, and anyone who delays the information delays their own divorce.
The marriage period: the window that counts
What is recorded is not your entire pension history but a precisely defined window. The marriage period begins on the first day of the month in which you married and ends on the last day of the month before the divorce application is served (§ 3 (1) VersAusglG).
Whatever was built up before or after stays out of it. The entitlements themselves still have to be stated in full; the share attributable to the marriage period is determined by the pension providers, not by you.
What belongs in it
Every entitlement to an old-age or invalidity pension has to be stated (§ 2 VersAusglG):
- The statutory pension insurance, with your insurance number.
- Civil servants’ pensions from federal, state and municipal employers.
- Professional pension schemes: doctors, lawyers, architects, pharmacists.
- Occupational pension schemes in all forms: direct commitment, direct insurance, Pensionskasse, pension fund, relief fund.
- Riester and Rürup contracts.
- Private pension insurance; endowment life insurance where the option of an annuity has already been exercised.
- Foreign entitlements, even where they are not directly equalized in the German proceedings.
For every entitlement you need the provider, the insurance or contract number and, if possible, the latest statement. Where there is not enough room on the form, supplementary sheets are expressly provided for.
The three entitlements that are regularly missing
From practice: the statutory pension is rarely forgotten. What gets forgotten is the small print of earlier working years.
The old occupational pension. Anyone who spent three years with an employer twenty years ago often has a vested entitlement there, and no documents any more. A look at old employment contracts and payslips is worthwhile.
The direct insurance. It runs in the employee’s name but was taken out by the employer and is therefore frequently not perceived as pension provision of one’s own.
The entitlement from years abroad. Anyone who worked abroad for a few years usually acquired claims there. They belong in the questionnaire, even where they are not divided directly in the German proceedings (§ 19 VersAusglG) but only later through a compensation under the law of obligations.
The real lever: clarifying your pension record
The most effective step happens before the form. In the Kontenklärung (clarification of your pension record), the German pension insurance checks your insurance history for gaps and adds missing periods: periods of school and training, periods of raising children, periods of care, stays abroad.
Where the record is unclarified, the provider cannot give the court solid information. It asks, you supply, it recalculates, and the proceedings stand still in the meantime. Anyone who starts the clarification early takes that loop out in advance.
Before you send it off
- Are all employers from the marriage period included, short jobs as well?
- Have contract and insurance numbers been transferred completely?
- Are the statements enclosed as copies?
- Do you have a copy of the completed form for your own records?
- Is the form signed and the case number entered?
A note in our own interest: a draft bill from 2026 is intended to make forgotten or concealed pension entitlements capable of equalization even after the proceedings have ended. It is not yet in force; until then it stays the case that gaps are best closed before the order.
What comes next
What happens with the replies, and why in the end no money flows but one pension account becomes two, is set out under pension rights adjustment. A rough calculation of your own is possible with the pension adjustment calculator.
Whether the adjustment takes place in your case at all, that is with a short marriage, minor entitlements or an agreement, is clarified by when the pension rights adjustment falls away. And where the questionnaire sits in the overall course is shown by how does a divorce work?.
Which entitlements count and how the providers value them decides your provision in old age. We go through the questionnaire with you before it leaves the house, and afterwards we check the pension providers’ replies for plausibility.
Attorney at law · focus on family law
Admitted since 2010, more than fifteen years of experience in advising and representation. The contact for new instructions at Karcher Rechtsanwälte in Frankfurt-Gallus.
Legal notice: This article is provided for general information and does not replace legal advice in an individual case. Any laws, deadlines and amounts mentioned reflect the state of affairs at the time of publication and may change. A binding assessment requires a personal consultation.