Dying before pensionable age - options

peakoil42

Sadly my brother passed away yesterday, mid transfer. The current situation is that the original pension provider has received notification from the new pension provider, and is disinvesting funds to be able to write a cheque for the new pension. This is expected to complete sometime next week.

Now the IFA has suggested that until the funds are actually with the new pension provider and cleared, there is no contract and that therefore my brother would lose out. However, if I don't inform them until after the cheque clears, and the new pension provider has paid the IFA fee and setup the account, what would actually happen? Would the new pension provider have to repay the old one? Claim back the IFA fee? Would they just keep the money? Or would it actually still be my brothers? All the documents signed and dated by my brother were obviously pre-death so isn't that the important date?

Should I at least inform the IFA? He is working on my brothers behalf of course, but I don't want to put him in a compromising position.

jamesd

Tell the IFA.

There's no prospect of successful concealment because you can expect that the original scheme will ask for a copy of the death certificate. In any case, it'd be a significant case of fraud to make any misrepresentations, so avoid that.

The original scheme has clearly accepted the transfer request and may well choose not to do anything to interfere with the transfer at this point. It will depend on the details of the scheme rules and how the trustees of it decide but given the circumstances and an accepted transfer request I think it's likely that they will be inclined to act favourably.

If the new scheme will not accept the inbound transfer after death the old scheme may choose to pay out the money, even though it wouldn't do so in less unfortunate timing circumstances.

Ask the IFA to advocate for those outcomes on behalf of your brother, who clearly desired those sorts of outcome. All part of the IFA service, so do use it.

GhIFA

OP, sorry to hear that news.

Death Certificates will be needed as part of the claim process, so there is little point in not telling the IFA. Indeed, he will act on your/your brother's behalf to try and get the best possible outcome.