Peninsula Pensions, as the administering authority has absolute discretion over who receives any lump sum death grant and will want to honour your wishes.
This means it can be paid to the person(s) you have nominated on your expression of wish form, to your personal representatives or to any person who appears, at any time, to have been your relative or dependant.
There is a Death Grant Expression of Wish form where you indicate who you want to benefit from your death grant. You can choose one person, a number of people or even an organisation, such as a charity. You can complete this form, or make a new one at anytime.
However the quickest way to set up or update your nomination is via the Member Self Service portal.
If any part of the death grant has not been paid within two years, it must be paid to your personal representatives, i.e. to your estate.
If you have paid AVCs and a lump sum is to be paid from your AVC fund, Peninsula Pensions has absolute discretion over who to pay that sum to, provided that you paid into the LGPS on or after 1 April 2014. If you left the LGPS before 1 April 2014, the administering authority must pay any AVC lump sum to your estate.
Please ensure that you update your nomination details on Member Self Service in the event of your death. Where there is no clear nomination/Will made, and payment is made outside of two years, the death grant becomes payable to your personal representative, i.e. the deceased estate. When we make payment to the personal representative, we then need to comply with the HMRC tax rules, as we have no discretion, and the death grant would become taxable. Currently the rate of tax is 45% – hence the important of making a nomination expressing your wishes.