For most judgment debtors, the balance sheet is brutally simple: a home, a pension, and not much else. The home is familiar territory for enforcement of judgment debts: charging orders, orders for sale, receivers. The pension pot is different. It exists in a heavily regulated and legislated environment and is wrapped up in the language of trusts and scheme rules, along with the general comforting idea that retirement assets are special. But special is not the same thing as safe, and pension assets do remain potentially available for enforcement. Yet after Manolete Partners Plc v White [2025] 1 WLR 1065 and the recent decision in Zubarev v Singh [2025] EWHC 2242 (Ch), you need to know exactly what kind of pension you are looking at before deciding whether it is a proper enforcement target or a dead end.
By Paul Newman KC, Barrister, Wilberforce Chambers
Stop saying “a pension” as if it were one thing
In enforcement terms, everything turns on classification:
- Occupational schemes, including many small self-administered schemes (SSASs), are protected by the prohibition on the alienation of such schemes’ benefits in section 91 of the Pensions Act 1995, including the ban on a court making an order “the effect of which” restrains a member of such a scheme from receiving their pension.
- Personal pensions, including many self-invested personal pensions (SIPPs), do not come under section 91’s protection.
That sounds like pensions jargon, but it is not: on that distinction turns whether the pension is a brick wall or a latched door.
The brick wall: Manolete and occupational pensions
Manolete Partners plc v White is now the essential starting point for occupational schemes. The creditor in that case had a large unsatisfied judgment and the debtor had a right to benefits under an occupational pension scheme. The creditor’s tactic was straightforward: apply to the court to exercise its power to grant injunctions under section 37 of the Senior Courts Act 1981 to order the debtor to exercise his scheme rights, draw down the pension money into a bank account in his own name, and thereby create a pot of cash available for enforcement.
The Court of Appeal, however, said no. Not because it was squeamish about debtors paying creditors, but because section 91(2) of the Pensions Act 1995 is drafted to stop courts from making orders whose effect is to restrain the member from receiving the occupational pension. Snowden LJ rejected as artificial the argument that the assets lose their protection as pensions after they are paid into the debtor’s account. The court must take a realistic, purposive view: if the order is part of a pre-planned sequence designed to make the pension available to the creditor, that is precisely what section 91(2) is meant to prevent.
So, if your research discloses that the debtor’s pension rights are in an occupational pension scheme caught by section 91, Manolete confirms that there is no prospect of enforcing against those rights by requiring the pension assets to be drawn down first.
The latched door: personal pensions and the TPDO trap
Personal pensions, however, remain a viable target for the enforcement of judgment debts. The modern starting point remains Blight v Brewster [2012] 1 WLR 2841, which (in appropriate cases) permits the court to use its section 37 powers to compel a judgment debtor to take steps to draw down a personal pension lump sum, turning pension rights into cash.
But personal pensions come with a trap that often catches out non-specialists. Together with the court’s section 37 powers, the remedy which is most commonly used to enforce against pension assets is the Third Party Debt Order pursuant to CPR 72 (TPDO): that enables the court to order a third party to pay to the judgment creditor the amount of any “debt due or accruing due” to the judgment debtor from the third party. However, the problem with the TPDO is that the figure on the debtor’s pension statement is not necessarily a “debt due” from the third party pension provider to the debtor. Many personal pensions are investment wrappers; and until the member crystallises their benefits and the provider is actually obliged to pay money out to them, there may be nothing for the TPDO to intercept.
This is where Zubarev v Singh comes into play.
Zubarev v Singh: the procedural reality check
Zubarev v Singh involved applications against personal pensions, including interim TPDOs and section 37 injunctive relief. Three points from the case are relevant to the judgment creditor’s enforcement strategy.
No “Manolete by analogy” for personal pensions
It was common ground in Zubarev that the benefits in question were held in personal, not occupational, pensions, so that section 91 had no direct application. The debtor argued, in effect, that the court should treat personal pensions analogously, applying the same protective policy. The court rejected that argument: there were material differences between occupational and personal pensions; Parliament could have extended section 91 to personal pensions, but it chose not to do so; and it would not be right for the Court to incorporate that restriction by way of judicial legislation.
So, for judgment creditors, personal pension benefits remain, in principle, available for enforcement purposes.
A TPDO is not a placeholder for money you hope will exist later
The Court emphasised orthodox TPDO principles: you can only obtain what the debtor could immediately and effectually sue for, and a judgment creditor cannot use the TPDO procedure to put itself in a better position than the debtor. If the pension provider is holding an invested fund and no sum is currently payable under the pension scheme provisions, there may be no “debt due or accruing due” at all, and a final TPDO cannot be made.
This is the practical point that matters: you cannot obtain a TPDO against a pension valuation: you can only intercept a debt.
Treat section 37 as the primary order; TPDO comes later (if at all)
The most valuable guidance in Zubarev is procedural. The judge declined to extend CPR 72 to permit interim TPDOs where no debt existed when the interim order was made. Instead, the court characterised the section 37 order as, in reality, the primary relief. The creditor should apply under section 37 first to compel the necessary instructions to draw down the benefits within the rules of the pension arrangement; and if, and only if, a debt is thereby crystallised, the creditor should then seek a TPDO (assuming such an order is necessary: hopefully by then, the debtor will have seen the writing on the wall).
The judgment even points towards a more efficient practice in this respect: seek section 37 relief on an interim basis that invites the provider to exercise its powers (or show cause why fiduciary or practical constraints prevent compliance), rather than trying to bolt a TPDO onto the same hearing as if it were a procedural formality.
The steps a creditor should take
From these cases come the following steps that a judgment creditor should take when seeking to enforce against pension assets:
- Identify the pension type early. A “pension” is not an asset class; it is a fork in the road. If the pension rights are under an occupational pension scheme, Manolete shuts down forced drawdown as a route to execution. By contrast, if the rights are under a personal pension scheme, Zubarev keeps the door open.
2. Match the procedure to the reality. If there is no presently payable debt, lead with section 37, not CPR 72.
3. Expect to expend time and effort. Zubarev shows how messy the mechanics of enforcement can be: if the pension assets are held under trust, there may be fiduciary considerations preventing the trustee provider from disinvesting the pension funds for the benefit of the judgment creditor; and termination and tax deductions may need to occur before any net sum is realised. Those details may decide whether and when a “debt” exists for TPDO purposes and what the final sum available for enforcement will be.
4. Do not be speculative. The CPR 72 language and the court’s approach in Zubarev are hostile to applications made in the hope that there may be a valuable pension somewhere amongst the debtor’s assets. If you cannot properly identify a debt due or accruing due, a TPDO is not the appropriate tool.
Conclusion
Pensions still sit alongside property as the judgment debtor’s ‘big ticket’ assets, but they now split into two different enforcement worlds. Manolete has largely shut the door on forcing drawdown from occupational schemes as a staging post for execution. Zubarev keeps the personal pension door open but insists on procedural honesty: turn rights into money first, then enforce against the money. If you try to enforce against mere pensions promise, you will end up only throwing good money after bad.
Paul Newman KC, Barrister, Wilberforce Chambers
