Mother died and now accused of fraud what can we do?

peter999

IMPORTANT:
Your mother may have told them everything correctly.
They may have made cockup !!

Let them prove it.

peter999

Ms_Chocaholic

samja1 wrote: »

... they sent a nice condolences card and a letter to say they would start to pay the pension to her husband...........When they rang to say he died 10 years ago which was why she was getting the pension they said they couldnt find any record of her informing them of his death and so we must pay back all the money and more because it was fraud. They must have known he had died else they wouldnt have changed the person they paid the money to.

I don't understand this ... if the pension was FIL's then why, on receipt of information to say MIL had died, did they state that pension would start to be paid to husband when it was his pension fund anyway.

If pension fund had been unaware of FIL's death then surely they would have stated that they did not need to be informed of MIL's death if FIL still alive.

MarkyMarkD

Ms Choc

You are making a very good point.

The MIL dying would have been irrelevant to the pension in payment if the FIL had been alive all the time, as the insurance company believed.

I think we need Samja1 to clarify this a bit.

MarkyMarkD

peter999 wrote: »

IMPORTANT:
Your mother may have told them everything correctly.
They may have made cockup !!

Let them prove it.

peter999

It's irrelevant who told what, what. What matters is whether she was entitled to the money - and it seems likely that she was not.

peter999

MarkyMarkD wrote: »

It's irrelevant who told what, what. What matters is whether she was entitled to the money - and it seems likely that she was not.

If she has notified them, her responsibility has been fulfilled.

Many admin departments make mistakes & are full of idiots who don't know what they are doing.

peter999

Alfie_E

Ms_Chocaholic wrote: »

I don't understand this ... if the pension was FIL's then why, on receipt of information to say MIL had died, did they state that pension would start to be paid to husband when it was his pension fund anyway.

It could have been a mistake on the part of the pension provider. It’s not uncommon for a financial institution to send a simple reply by return of post, stating they’ll be processing your letter. If the pension company just looked at the letter they received and assume the pension was in the mother-in-law’s name, that could explain the initial response.

MarkyMarkD wrote: »

It's irrelevant who told what, what. What matters is whether she was entitled to the money - and it seems likely that she was not.

It’s important to know exactly what capacity the brother-in-law was acting in. If he was formally administering the estate of his father, it was his responsibly to inform the pension provider. If there were no contingent pension, I see no reason why a widow would need to make separate representation to the provider. He needs to show that he informed them. Paperwork for administering an estate must be kept for at least twelve years. That’s longer than the usual six years, for financial matters. And, the responsibly lasts indefinitely. I don’t see why the pension provider wouldn’t also have a claim against whoever administered the estate of the father-in-law. Yes, of course, the mother-in-law should have also have contacted the pension provider when she realised she was getting money into her account that she wasn’t entitled to.

dunstonh

If the initial notification was by phone to a call centre, then they have very limited information available to them most of the time. Also, most of the call centre operatives wouldnt know what happens with different policies. They take the information and pass it further down the line for someone else to deal with.

Sometimes you get people who know a little based on information they may have picked up here and there saying things that may be correct some of the time and not others.

If this pension annuity was paid from protected rights, then the death of the wife would have no impact on the payment and would continue to be paid to the husband. Hence the comment from the insurer. When the insurance company find out the husband died 10 years ago, then there are 10 years of half pension to claw back.

If the pension was single life with no spouse benefit, then again the wife passing away has no impact and the pension would continue for the husband. Again, they didnt know he was deceased.

So, there are various scenarios that could account for the comments made. As an IFA, I can tell you this would be clarified and resolved in minutes. If you have an IFA looking after the family, you could use them. That is what they are there for.

The resolution is likely to be return of payments. Either 100% if non-protected rights or 50% if protected rights (or combination).

But it doesnt matter what people say here. The facts are going to be black and white and the outcome will be black and white. There will be nothing to debate.

samja1

Hi

My husband has just read all your advice and is appreciative of all your comments whatever outcome is predicted.

I found it interesting what Mrs Chocaholic and someone else said about not telling us that it is irrelevant that she had died and we will cetainly look into the advisory service that yet another helpful poster mentioned.

My husband and his brother have spent some time today looking at old bank statements etc and trying to find the paperwork from their father's death but haven't got very far yet, in fact it is even more confusing as it seems that at one point (he doesn't know when because he still doesnt have all the information) the payments rose from £150 to £200. You would think that they would go down after he died not up.

I am sure she was entitled to something from the fund as she was a stay at home Mom and her husband would have wanted his pension to help her too. He was intelligent enough to have made provision in that way.

We are certainly learning some hard lessons from all of this though. Ididn't realise what a gamble pensions are. I knew that the more you paid in to begin with the better but my father in Law paid in thousands and thousands at quite a late stage in his working life (we still dont understand quite why he did this). Nearly ten times the amount he and his wife eventually got back from it. If the estate pays back the money she had after his death then it makes a mockery of any of his attempts to provide for them in their old age. He would have been better off hiding cash under the bed!!!

My husband and I will do more research and be sorting out some kind of alternatie to a pension after this mess has been cleared up. This forum seems a pretty good place to start.

I have to agree with whoever posted the message about thinking of it as money we never expected and so we wont miss it. This is the way we are looking at it all now. As long as we/he isnt going to be held liable for any mistake made (by whoever) from our own money we shall be fine.

I will keep all you kind 'experts' informed of the outcome.
Thank you again.

Samja1

MarkyMarkD

peter999 wrote: »

If she has notified them, her responsibility has been fulfilled.

Many admin departments make mistakes & are full of idiots who don't know what they are doing.

peter999

Sorry, peter, but IMHO you're wrong.

Just because you have fulfilled your responsibility by notifying an insurer of your spouse's death, doesn't make you the owner of any money the insurer incorrectly pays to you. They are entitled to recover these funds as the OP's mother wasn't entitled to receive them.

MarkyMarkD

samja1 wrote: »

I didn't realise what a gamble pensions are. I knew that the more you paid in to begin with the better but my father in Law paid in thousands and thousands at quite a late stage in his working life (we still dont understand quite why he did this). Nearly ten times the amount he and his wife eventually got back from it. If the estate pays back the money she had after his death then it makes a mockery of any of his attempts to provide for them in their old age. He would have been better off hiding cash under the bed!!!

There are two ways of looking at this.

If your view is that all you want is a fixed income for the rest of your life (or you life and your spouse's life, depending on the sort of pension/annuity you buy) then a pension entirely eliminates any element of risk from the point of retirement onwards. So it's not a gamble at all.

If your view is that you want to ensure that you, your spouse and your children enjoy all the money that you have made by the time you retire, but accept the risk that the money could run out completely if you live to a ripe old age, then it's better not to have a pension at all. So in these circumstances, a pension IS a gamble.

The reason that the government requires pensions to be used to purchase an annuity, and encourages the purchase of pensions, is that they don't want people taking the second approach and running out of money in their dotage, leaving them dependent on government benefits to support even a basic standard of living.

I personally take the first view of pensions - I want to have enough money for me and my wife in my retirement. My children can have whatever's left over OUTSIDE our pension savings.

Most people's children, these days, are plenty old when their parents die and they don't honestly need to inherit to continue living their lives happily enough. For most people, inheritances are an unexpected windfall and not something which they depend on.

I'd far rather my parents (or my remaining grandparent, for that matter) had everything they wanted whilst they are still alive than that they deprived themselves to ensure that there was something left over for me.

And my grandmother has taken this approach to a large extent - converting much of her cash into annuities - and I'm very happy with her doing that.