Am i right?

GHK

Hi, my husband died 6 months ago after a short fight with cancer leaving me and 2 young children. We had wills in place and I've sorted all but one of the his pensions out. One of his old work place pensions asked for a copy of the will along with both our birth certificates and wedding certificates plus the death certificate and confirmed the value of the pension. I sent all the documentation requested in, then 4 weeks later they wrote and said as the policy was over £100,000 it was standard for a letter of probate be sent to them, no other policy had asked for probate so i never started proceedings. I completed Probate which which was slightly delayed in court completion due to a back log and christmas, now the pension company have come back stating due to covid then pension value has fell by £40,000. I have challenged this by saying if on the day i rang to inform them of my husbands death if i was told i needed probate it would have been completed before covid and the value wouldn't have been so different ( i did actually think the pension would have been frozen on the date i called) . This has now been going back and forth for 8 weeks and i'm no further forward, so my question is am i right to challenge that they  should have requested probate on the day they confirmed the pension value and they are at fault?   

Flugelhorn

I am sorry to hear of your loss and that you are having this struggle, seems very unfair. This article mentions that the value of a DC scheme should be at the date of death  - maybe worth contacting them to discuss 
https://www.pensionsadvisoryservice.org.uk/about-pensions/when-things-change/bereavement-what-to-do/what-happens-when-i-die

Keep_pedalling

Would you actually have cashed in all those investments in his pension?  I am afraid like the rest of us holding equities they have taken a pounding over the last few months, however equities are held for the long term, and if they have been held over many years then the losses have to be set against the gains they have made over those years

 Whatever you do  you do do not sell then now, they will almost certainly bounce back once this is over, at the moment you only have paper losses don’t crystallise  them if you can possibly avoid it.

AnAnonUser

When my wife died i had a letter regarding her pension which said (rough wording) " normally we'd freeze all the investments but given the current circumstances, if you wish to move into cash let us know and we can do that".

But, importantly, probate wasn't needed.  

All they required was death certificate and will.

Also I understood pensions were outside of the estate and so probate shouldnt come into it?

So i think OP (my sincere condolences to you) you should look into this because if it isn't needed then you may well have a claim against them. Disclaimer .....  I'm not a lawyer..

Savvy_Sue

It may be worth phoning a couple of financial advisers - try to find one specialising in Pensions - to see if you can get a generic answer to your question. 

Also this may get better answers on the Pensions board? 

I am so sorry for your loss. 

Brynsam

Savvy_Sue said:

It may be worth phoning a couple of financial advisers - try to find one specialising in Pensions - to see if you can get a generic answer to your question. 

No need. Free, expert and impartial help readily available from https://www.pensionsadvisoryservice.org.uk

The really bewildering part of all this is why they think they need sight of probate and, as you say, if they wanted it, why take 4 weeks to tell you? Life must be quite awful enough for you without this carry on. I'm sorry you're having to go through it.

xylophone

they wrote and said as the policy was over £100,000 it was standard for a letter of probate be sent to them, 

I cannot see that there was actually a need for probate - it seems to have been a case of " We at XYZ Co  expect  sight of a Grant if the value is at a certain level......"?