Planning ahead? You're in the right place. Dealing with a death now? → What to do when someone dies · Bereavement first steps
Most pension savings sit outside your estate — held under the scheme's own trust or contract rules — so your will has no authority over them. What directs the money instead is the nomination — also called an expression of wish or death-benefit nomination — held in the scheme's records, not your filing cabinet. You can rewrite your will a dozen times; if the nomination on file still names someone else, the scheme is looking at that.
The will is the document everyone updates. The nomination is the document everyone forgets — and for the pension, the nomination is the one that counts.
In most modern schemes the nomination is formally an expression of wish: the trustees must consider it, but the final decision is theirs. That discretion is usually exercised sensibly — a plainly stale form, weighed against your real circumstances, is often looked past. But usually is doing real work in that sentence, and nobody — you, your family, your executor — can instruct them.
Do not assume either result without the scheme's decision. What you can do is make sure the trustees are never deciding against a stale piece of paper.
Defined contribution schemes, personal pensions, SIPPs. There is an actual fund — the nomination carries the most weight and the most money.
Defined benefit schemes. There's no pot to hand over — survivor income is set by the scheme's rules, but a nomination usually guides any lump sum.
Normally stops at death — nothing to nominate. A surviving spouse or civil partner's own entitlement can sometimes be affected by the other's National Insurance record.
A divorce that changes what your will does cannot be assumed to change what your nomination does. The law treats a former spouse as having died for the purposes of gifts in your will — but a pension nomination is not part of your will. It lives under the scheme's own rules, where a form signed in a different decade can sit there naming a different life.
The same applies in reverse whenever life changes shape:
marriage, a new partner, a birth, a death among your nominated people, a new job, a pension transfer — each one is a re-check trigger, and a transfer can create a fresh arrangement where nominations may not follow the money.
Old paperwork, dormant email folders, and — for the employer whose provider you can't name — the government's free Pension Tracing Service, which can help you find contact details for an old scheme. It will not tell you whether you have a pension there, or what it's worth.
Who is currently nominated, and when was that recorded? Three piles: current (tick, done) · stale (replace via the provider's form or portal, keep the confirmation) · missing (the trustees would be deciding with no steer from you at all — the pile that causes the most delay and distress).
Your people should know one sentence: the pensions are listed, and the nominations are current as of the date shown. This is exactly what the household dossier holds.
If you're employed, there may be a second sum riding on the same forgotten form. Many employers provide a death-in-service benefit — often calculated as a multiple of salary — routed through the same discretionary arrangement and its own nomination. Same audit, same hour.
Death in service, in fullInformational, not legal, financial, or tax advice, and covers England & Wales only. Pension death benefits are governed by each scheme's rules and the trustees' decisions — verify the current position with your scheme and at GOV.UK.
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