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

ems2

That is great news Samja1 and i have to say, unfortunate though the circumstances, this thread is very very informative

samja1

ems2

glad it has been of interest. hopefully other money savers will benefit from the thread and advice that our problem has thrown up.

samja1

munk

Hi samja1 - did you manage to get this problem resolved at all?

We're in a similar situation at the moment whereby my mother is still being paid my deceased father's full pension 3 years after he passed away (she was apparently due to be paid a half pension after he died). The pension company wasn't informed about my father's death for one reason or another and I've only just got an inkling recently there's a problem when I started to help organize my mum's finances.

The problem here is one of confusion and just plain oversight - my dad had money invested in the pension company in fund investments as well as having the pension annuity with the same company. Mum did have her soliciter deal with the investments part but in the mean time the pension was overlooked. Since then I think she just presumed the money coming into her (previously joint account, same as OP) was the income from the investment that had been transferred into her name. In a word, confusion :P

Anyway, finally I'm getting around to helping sort the problem and thought I'd search for similar problems here and found this thread Wasn't encouraging though to hear they wanted 'the whole money and more' from you though - must admit I'm kind of putting off contacting the pension company about it for fear of how much they'll want back and allegations of fraud etc. Will have to get onto it asap.

Does anyone know how much a pension company are within law to ask for as interest payments in this kind of situation? My mum's been paid full pension of £150/month for 3.5yrs now instead of the £75 half pension she should have got - just over £3000 roughly. Gutting thing is she wouldn't have made a lot on the money because it went straight into a 0.1%pa lloyds current a/c so if they ask for 8%pa she's out of pocket

Cheers.

dunstonh

Does anyone know how much a pension company are within law to ask for as interest payments in this kind of situation?

I wouldnt expect them to ask for any interest on top. Just a refund of the extra amount.

munk

Cheers dunstonh, I'll get onto this asap.

MarkyMarkD

I would expect them to ask for interest - why the heck not? They've been defrauded.

And the fact that the recipient has left the money sitting in an account paying a rubbish rate is scarcely the insurer's fault.

Alfie_E

MarkyMarkD wrote: »

They've been defrauded.

That’s rather a strong word. From munk’s description, it isn’t fraud. Even the new Fraud Act 2006 only says the following.

Fraud by failing to disclose information

A person is in breach of this section if he—

(a) dishonestly fails to disclose to another person information which he is under a legal duty to disclose, and
(b) intends, by failing to disclose the information—

(i) to make a gain for himself or another, or
(ii) to cause loss to another or to expose another to a risk of loss.

Getting confused and/or forgetting doesn’t show intent.

While they’re entitled to interest, would they bother for such a relatively small amount? Like dunstonh says, probably not.

Primrose

I am very surprised that if your father in law died ten years ago the pension fund had not at least three times (every three years) sent a letter to your mother in law asking her to confirm with a witnessed form by an independent person, that she was still alive and legitimately receiving a pension. This is good practice by pensions funds, as suggested by most auditors, to prevent fraud of the type where somebody dies and a non-legitimate person such as other non-entitled relatives, continue to draw the pension after death. As your mother-in-law is now dead herself, she cannot confirm whether she received such letters and actioned them, but I would certainly challenge the pension fund trustees to produce them, because if they had been going through this process there would have been evidence that she was legitimately receiving the pension. If, after her husband's death the spouse's pension (if she was entitled to one and the pension wasn't on his sole life) was paid into a different numbered account because they didn't have a joint account, I would take this as evidence that the trustees had been notified of the death, because how else would they know to pay the money into a different account. I would certainly consult a solicitor. If your mother in law wasn't entitled to receive a pension and the trustees paid one to her, they are certainly guilty of careless practice, if not negligence.

munk

I should just say - I did call Legal & General about our situation eventually on Friday. To recap:

We're in a similar situation at the moment whereby my mother is still being paid my deceased father's full pension 3 years after he passed away (she was apparently due to be paid a half pension after he died). The pension company wasn't informed about my father's death for one reason or another and I've only just got an inkling recently there's a problem when I started to help organize my mum's finances.

Legal & General - who the pension annuity is with - were extremely reassuring and helpful I have to say here in this instance. Explaining the situation, the representative said:

• the pension annuity would initially be stopped so the problem wasn't compounded by more overpayments going out
• a request would be made to calculate exactly how much had been overpaid to date (he gave a rough estimate of around £3k which is more or less what I thought which was good to know)
• once the total overpayment was calculated, my mother would be informed of the total and given the option to either pay in one lump sum or possibly repay the total over a period of time by offsetting what my mother gets in the future (ie go without pension payments for the next 3 years to offset the 3 years of overpayments so far, or maybe only receive 3/4 of her allowed pension per month until the overpayment is paid off... though I don't see this is going to be viable because that would mean 15 years to pay the debt off! I think that was just him giving an example off top of his head...)

Far too sensible and logical and straightforward for a financial provider (ok I'm cynical after the fiasco with Scottish Widows!).

All in all, makes a pleasant change from the times you ring up and feel like you're banging your head against a brick wall. The bloke was very helpful and stressed at least 3 times(!) for me to reassure my mother that her pension wouldn't be canceled and that generally this wasn't a big problem for her to get worried about (to be honest I think it was me doing more worrying than her hehe).

Thumbs up to L&G, small things things like this (ie being decent on the phone) make a big difference in terms of someone recommending future business their way - for me anyway

munk

Another update to the above post regards my mother being overpaid my father's pension for 3yrs instead of receiving just her entitlement of a half pension during that time:

The good news is that we've more or less sorted the problem out now and on top of it all my mum got a £300 cheque for her trouble! This was very unexpected but of course very welcome - certainly a lot better than the initial thoughts we had about being charged with fraud etc etc!

The cover letter with the cheque basically said thanks for being so accommodating and paying the money back straight away, here's a cheque for your trouble!

Excellent.

To sum up, mum had to repay the £6k that was overpaid by mistake during the 3 years and in return she received what was actually owed to her - roughly £3k. Things aren't completely cleared up yet because her pension is being paid on a temporary tax code which means she's probably not getting as much as she should be, but once the correct tax code is acquired she should be paid the difference and the new payments will be adjusted as well.

Moral of this story - it (literally) pays to be honest!