Partners ex employers still paying into pension

mark5

g0009348 wrote: »

no idea, its the first year we have been together and it was only noticed because i'm getting our finances in order. Judging by the way she treats her other finance related letter, i doubt shes ever read it before!

it doesn't say what type of pension, just that there has been payments received from both employee and employer each month throughout the year

Sounds like my mrs!

Triumph13

The possible explanations are incompetence, mistaken identity or fraud. It would require some fairly staggering incompetence not to work out that employee contributions paid over don't match contributions collected, but I've seen worse. The more likely option that your partner is getting someone else's contributions by mistake (and that person is equally slack about their finances and hasn't noticed). The third possibility is that your partner is still on the payroll as a ghost employee with her paycheque going to the fraudster's bank account each month and the pension contributions going through as normal.
Whichever option it is I can only recommend contacting her former employer asap. Now that you have discovered the issue, I'm afraid that keeping quiet about it in the hope of benefitting almost certainly comes under the legal definition of theft so much better to call them before they call her to ask why she hadn't noticed.

atush

And if you contact them, they will realize you have been upright and truthful and might just ask for the money back. In which case I would pay it back to them and keep the investment growth?

It is worth the try in any case.

Does she have pension with her new employer?

g0009348

yes, shes got 3 other pensions (looking to merge them was one of the things to be reviewed). She left this job 7+ years ago, so its prob been going on since then

xylophone

She should contact the her ex employer/pension administrators and explain that on seeking to consolidate her pensions she has discovered what appears to be an error.

AnotherJoe

Please let us know what the outcome was. Sounds intriguing.

[Deleted User]

Would love to know the outcome too!

jamesd

To maximise the chance of getting to keep the profits she might try:

1. contact the pension company first, tell them that there has been an error and authorise them to return without question all amounts paid in since she left, but not any gains.

2. then contact the employer, tell them that she either didn't get or never read past statements but her new partner did and noticed that she'd been getting new payments that she shouldn't have been getting, so she has told the pension company to return the payments but not any gains on them as soon as the company requests that.

The company might go for this because she has alerted them to the problem and made an arrangement that with no argument gets them their money back.

Beats the unwinding option they could go for that would cost her all of the gains on the money.

atush

It would certainly be easier and faster for her ex company should she pre arrange this.

I personally would not mention any gains during the initial conversation/letter to her old company. I would just tell them I had arranged for repayment of their contributions from date of leaving. Perhaps even include the figure (which she can get from the pension company).

Oldmaid

I'd love to know what happened as I have just found myself in exactly this situation and am panicking.

I was going through some old paperwork and found a letter from a pension provider dated 2011 saying they thought they had a pension of mine and could I confirm some details. Attached was a statement and it had employee and employers contributions on it totalling £3k a year. I left this company 13 years ago!!!

I don't even remember seeing this letter before and there has been no further correspondence.

Can they ask me to pay it back? I'm now a stay at home mum and the balance in the pot is £23k!!