Late husbands pension

Tommyjw

D A Industrial Design Limited

NOW: PENSIONS TRUST

Address

Mercer Member Support Team

St. James Tower

7 Charlotte Street

MANCHESTER

United Kingdom

M1 4DZ

Telephone

0330 100 3334

From government search, a possibility?

Marcon

jack_tyler said:

Marcon said:

jack_tyler said:

xylophone said:

Your husband has recently died?

Presumably this was a pension he had from a former employer for whom he was not working at the time of his death?

How do you know that he had a pension with this employer? Do you have records of some  description which confirm this?

My husband died in 2014, I know he had a pension with his former employer as deductions where taken out of his wage each week, but he was not working for that employer when he died. All I know is the name of the business as it was when my late husband worked there, and the name it goes by now.

Don't worry about posting those names here - it's perfectly OK to do so. All you are doing is asking for information, and someone here might be able to help if they have the company name(s) - preferably as accurately as possible, since there are often lots of companies within one group with fairly similar names, but just do the best you can remember.

If your husband died nearly a decade ago, I wonder what's happened to make you start investigating now. Did you make any checks at the time of his death? Have you (and indeed he) moved house since working for the employer with whom you think he has a pension - and if so, did he give them his new address?

My husband was killed in a motorcycle accident in 2014 and it was on my birthday. The reason I am investigating now is because I wasn't aware that I may be entitled to it until I watched Martins program about searching for lost pensions. I didn't make any checks at the time of his death because I was looking after our 12yr old son who had just lost his dad, and 8 months after this my dad, my sons grandad passed away, so at that time I had more than enough to deal with. No we have never moved house, I still live in the same house I shared with my late husband.

How truly appalling for you and your son. It's very hard to understand why, if you've never moved house, there has apparently been no communication from anyone about your husband's pension if as you say he was contributing from 1985 to 2007. 
Is there any possibility he transferred it to his last employer's pension scheme?

I've looked at Companies House and can't see anything in the published accounts about pension provision for employees, so I can't add to anything anyone else has said about what sort of provision it might be. Whatever type of pension it was, you'd normally expect an annual communication of some description if he was a member - and from your post, it sounds as if you've never received anything?

I hope Tommy's info above will enable you to establish the position, but do please come back and update this thread if it doesn't and we can have another collective think.

p00hsticks

Marcon said:

 Whatever type of pension it was, you'd normally expect an annual communication of some description if he was a member - and from your post, it sounds as if you've never received anything?

If it was a Defined Benefit pension, you'd normally get a statement on leaving the company, but I'm not sure you'd necessarily get anything further until you were approaching the normal retirement age for the scheme.

xylophone

If it was a Defined Benefit pension, you'd normally get a statement on leaving the company, but I'm not sure you'd necessarily get anything further until you were approaching the normal retirement age for the scheme.

This is perfectly true - I can think of one scheme where early leavers were waved off with a polite smile and "Please inform us if you should change address. Otherwise, please contact us shortly before you reach age 60."

And there were no annual statements provided for the deferred members of the scheme.

Marcon

xylophone said:

If it was a Defined Benefit pension, you'd normally get a statement on leaving the company, but I'm not sure you'd necessarily get anything further until you were approaching the normal retirement age for the scheme.

This is perfectly true - I can think of one scheme where early leavers were waved off with a polite smile and "Please inform us if you should change address. Otherwise, please contact us shortly before you reach age 60."

And there were no annual statements provided for the deferred members of the scheme.

Not true.

Deferred members don't get annual benefit statements for a DB scheme, but all members (including deferreds) get annual summary funding statements - hence my reference to 'an annual communication of some description'. 

Given the dates of membership, it's highly unlikely these would have been sent electronically, so I don't think that explains why nothing has been landing on the doormat, given that OP confirms she has not moved house since the death of her husband.

xylophone

Deferred members don't get annual benefit statements for a DB scheme, but all members (including deferreds) get annual summary funding statements - hence my reference to 'an annual communication of some description'. 

I am not sure what you mean by this - I can assure you that nothing personalised was received by even active members of this particular non contributory scheme. 

Whether this is different now I don't know.

If you mean a general statement of the "health" of the particular pension fund, that is a different matter.

I seem to remember that there was an annual report and  Actuarial Statement.

Marcon

xylophone said:

Deferred members don't get annual benefit statements for a DB scheme, but all members (including deferreds) get annual summary funding statements - hence my reference to 'an annual communication of some description'. 

I am not sure what you mean by this - I can assure you that nothing personalised was received by even active members of this particular non contributory scheme. 

Whether this is different now I don't know.

If you mean a general statement of the "health" of the particular pension fund, that is a different matter.

I seem to remember that there was an annual report and  Actuarial Statement.

It wouldn't need to be personalised to give OP some help in tracking down her late husband's pension entitlements.

Google on summary funding statement if you're not sure what one is - but probably not helpful to OP to continue this dialogue when all that needs to be confirmed is that she hasn't seen anything in relation to any pension entitlement.

xylophone

Google on summary funding statement if you're not sure what one is

I believe I could manage that - thank you for the kind suggestion and have followed it.

I notice the reference to the Pensions Schemes Act 2004 - the person in the scheme  to which i referred thinking became deferred in 1981.

but probably not helpful to OP to continue this dialogue 

I believe that the comment I made concerning the question of pension statements was in answer to the point made by poohsticks rather than to the OP's query - I made some suggestions to the OP 

here

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/79910945/#Comment_79910945

and

here

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/79896319/#Comment_79896319

In addition, in case the OP had not seen Tommyjw's most helpful suggestion, I pm'd her a couple of days back - I hope that she will see it.