Death without a will and co habitation

[RonaldMcDonald]

What happens nowadays if you die without having made a will and you were co habiting?
This has happened to my friend.
He has made financial provision for his children but has made no new will since he started to co habit with his new girlfriend
She says that she gets 2/3s of the money and the children the rest split between them
Sounds a bit unfair as his kids are young

Any ideas? She has called the insurance co to tell them she is the next of kin.
Help if poss would be v gratefully received
Ta

Am a bit drunken and despondent tbh but you have all been amazing in your help and support
Thanks

Has the mother actually written to the trustees?
Could it be that those letters are fake?

The letters are real. Decision has been made so quickly. I'm in complete shock but solicitor had previously said that the will could/would perhaps be disregarded etc.
I just expected better

Isn't this the point at which the solicitor should be seeking counsel's advice from a barrister who specialises in this area of law? Of course there’s a cost involved but the children are currently losing ¾ of their father’s estate and time is of the essence as the Trustees seem ready to pay out.

I would find a better solicitor.

In no way is that fair and I doubt very much it is what your friend would have wanted for his children either.

A two years relationship is no time at all.

A family friend died intestate. It seems He did this purposefully to avoid leaving it all to his money grabbing wife.

The wife tried to claim his insurance policy as it was unnamed. His adult DC's contested it and went into the estate, where they got half.

That's awful. Does the girlfriend have any sort of relationship at all (even just knowing) with any of the trustees that have made the decision?

Did the trustees have any information about the truth of the situation when they made the decision or was it based just on what the girlfriend told them?

I would be getting the solicitor to write to them formally asap to say that you believe they have not acted properly (albeit in proper legal jargon!) - didn't somebody much earlier in the thread say that it was possible to challenge trustee decisions (and their decision making process) when they didn't take minor dependents into account. I would also get them to hold out on paying anything out until the complaint has been formalised otherwise the girlfriend might take the money and spend it or hide it so they wouldn't get it back. Surely there must be some guidelines (general or written into the trust documents itself - do you have a copy of these to check?) that they should be following - otherwise how do you know when you set up a trust that any of the money will be paid out to the people you want it to go to and not to the cats home that happens to be the favourite charity of the trustee?

I'd also be writing to the Dear Jessica person I mentioned in the Telegraph earlier to see if she could help - or at least raise the issue for others to be wary of! (her column identifies people by initials so it's not like you're parading all your details in the press). And I think there are similar columns in most newspapers if you don't want to use that one.

It would be good to see if it is possible to get information from the trustees as to why they made the decision they did and why they think that a grown woman in a relationship with somebody for 2 years has more rights to money in a trust that was set up to provide for his children!

Try googling 'challenging pension fund trustees distribution' and similar - there are lots of interesting looking articles - although the solicitor should really know all this stuff already I'd have thought!

This looked interesting and relevant at a quick skim through...

www.iol.co.za/business/personal-finance/retirement/limited-recourse-on-death-benefit-decisions-1.1664689#.VBGPtmP_ItU

as did this article - albeit it coming from the setting up side of things rather than the what happens afterwards, but it shows what you would hope and expect!
www.aviva-for-advisers.co.uk/adviser/site/public/tech-centre/tech-article-detail/pension-death-benefits-trusts-and-nominations

How on earth can a valid will be written off and so fast ???? That solicitor is being very odd to me.

How on earth can a valid will be written off and so fast

It appears the life insurance was written in trust. The will is therefore completely irrelevant. It is not being written off at all. It simply doesn't enter into the matter.

The point of writing life insurance in trust is that the payout does not form part of the deceased's estate. This means it is not subject to IHT and cannot be claimed by the deceased's creditors (if there are any). It also means that the will does not determine how the funds are distributed. The trustees of the scheme are free to distribute the money in any way they consider appropriate.

Maybe the children's mother or you as an executor acting on her behalf should contact the HR department and board of directors of the company to tell them how badly the trustees of the pension company have acted. And to ask them to notify all other members of the scheme to carefully assess what they would like to happen to their fund in the even of their untimely death - to check that their wishes are up to date. I know that the trustees don't have to go with what the person wanted but but I bet a lot of them would be horrified to think that this sort of situation could happen. It might also make them look again at who they have appointed to be the trustees and if their decision making processes are in line with what you would expect from a company. I'm guessing that the company would want to appear decent, compassionate, fair and reasonable (most companies do!) and if people realised quite how swiftly and badly the trustees have distributed these funds it casts the company into a bad light for choosing these people as trustees

I would be very tempted to send an '[email protected]' email if I could find the group email address that worked to tell the other workers what had happened - both so that they would be able to try to name actual beneficiaries or leave an indication of who should be the recipient and why - and to embarrass the company into talking to the trustees to reconsider their decision making process in this case!

I still reckon that the pension company have made the decision on 'facts' provided by the girlfriend rather than the actual facts and that they think she is his wife, that the kids are amazingly well provided for elsewhere and so on massive assumptions I know

Does anyone know how you would find out if someone had a life insurance policy?

I agree with phf that a policy in trust avoids IHT and therefore is a financial arrangement outside the Will. I just hope he was fully aware of what impact this was going to have.

OP if the policy is solely in her name why are they giving 25% to the dc? Surely that means there was some discussion by the trustees and some compromise? And why if the policy was in her name was she classed as a dependent, surely that wasn't necessary? Could it be that she has nominated herself in some way?

*prhbridge

Wow. I've been following this thread for the past few days and this was definitely not the happy resolution I was expecting.
Can it really be true, the GF get 3/4 and the children get 1/8 each?

I'm so sorry for all you've all been through.

I hope the GF hasn't swayed the co. by saying the chn are already 'catered for' by their mother. That shouldn't have anything to do what they receive from their father.

My OHs DM called a while ago to say that as OH was catered for so well by her DFs will (they're divorced) she's not going to leave her anything and instead name DhalfSis as sole benefactor. OH was a bit and just shrugged it off... But it definitely did sting a bit.

This has kind of happened to us, with a few added complications. My father's GF, who shafted us (his children) for 30 years, willfully depriving us of his company, is now also utterly shafting us after his death, and going actively against his wishes. Her desire to have everything is too great for her to resist, even in France where inheritance laws are very clear-cut.

I hope your friend can rise above it. It's utterly shite to have to be the bigger person, but you can't let obsession with stuff eat you up. Ultimately my father's GF is still a sad old crone, with no family of her own.

I think the thing we have to learn from these stories is that you cannot rely on goodwill or on people doing the right thing by children. I am quite shocked by anyone who would want to take inheritance away from dependents or even adult children and family. If my DP died Intestate I would not expect anything even as a lifelong partner, it should all go to our children.

And if people want to avoid inheritance tax it means they are taking their money out of inheritance and putting it the hands of someone else entirely for them to do with as they please. It's a bit like giving money to someone and then expecting them to give money to someone else.

Sometimes I think you are better off dying intestate because then everything goes directly to children without discussion. Sod the IHT, at least you know where the money is going.

Personally I would be thinking about making and shaking the gf everywhere...

Alternatively I really really think you need a better solicitor to take this further. Living with someone for two years in no way makes you a dependant... Someone needs to challenge this on behalf of the kids who clearly are dependant. Get the best solicitor you can find...

*naming and shaming!!!!

OP you say the old Will stands and there was no new one. You say there was no beneficiary name on the Insurance policy. She claimed herself as both next of kin and executor and changed the outcome of the trust to be in her favour on the basis that there was another Will. Surely that is a kind of fraud? I would certainly say it was deception?

The whole process should be frozen and those named on the will should be put in charge. She has no say in any of this as far as I can see. When db died everything went to his sons mother in trust until they were old enough. His gf is negotiating to get a sum, fair enough imo. She was not a dependent although sometimes gfs can be seen as dependents even without children. She will get something as both son and his mother understand. Bloody minefield isn't it.

I agree about the naming and shaming. I don't understand why people are so passive about this. It's not just 'stuff', it's fighting for what the deceased would have wanted. It is the right thing to do imo.

changed the outcome of the trust

No she did not change the outcome of the trust. She could not do so. The insurance money is distributed by the trustees of the insurance scheme at their discretion and has nothing to do with any will.

How does the insurance company come to eir decision? If she has presented herself as NOK and executor and claiming there was another will would they have made the right decision?

i think you need to stop thinking about the pension payout as an inheritance - that's not usually the primary purpose of a pension scheme. it's purpose is to provide an income when the insured person can no longer work. so in death in service situations the trustees will look to "compensate" (not the right word but I can't think of a better one) those who have suffered from the loss of the insured person's future income. so in this case, the cohabiting girlfriend is probably the biggest loser.

I'm not involved with this or any other pension fund decision - but I can see how they could come to the decision they have.

Whether it's legal or not I don't know, but it sounds thoroughly immoral. I would have thought it should be DC 75%, GF of 2 years of independent means 25%.

How did the Trustees of the scheme get the information upon which to make their decision? Was it provided just by the GF?

It is the trustees, not the insurance company. It sounds like this is a benefit from the deceased's employer so it is likely that the trustees are senior staff at the employer. They should have got information on the deceased's dependents and considered the interests of the various potential beneficiaries before deciding how to distribute the funds.

As MrsWobble3 indicates, it seems the trustees in this case have decided that the girlfriend is the biggest loser and that the amount they have allocated for the children is sufficient to compensate for any loss of income from the deceased.

I think what MrsWobble says makes sense. I'm not saying it's morally right but it's understandable.

I think it would be understandable and technically correct IF the Girlfriend had presented herself as she truly was, a working woman who had known him for two years. As it is she presented herself not only as rightful executor and rightful NOK, but also as a dependent, pretending that he had written a new Will in order to claim her position. I think the trustees have made their decisions based on her false pretences.

Or have I missed something here?