Pension preservation order?

[broccoli]

Hi,

My aunt was separated from her husband in the 90's, and he has recently died.
He was paying her maintenance from his pension, and this has been stopped.

His pension scheme is based in the UK. One of its rules states that if the pension scheme member and spouse are not married and living together at the time of death, that subsequent payouts are at the discretion of the trustees. If they were married & living together, my aunt would get 50% of the pension.

The trustees have decided not to pay out.
The executor of her husband's will, and his solicitor have kindly agreed to help out, but my aunt is not their client. So I just want to check if we are doing the correct thing. So far they have sent a letter to the trustees stating that a portion of the pension was expected. They say that they will mention the pension preservation order depending on the response. Each response seems to take weeks, and it is dragging on a bit now.

My aunt is in a nursing home, and is not able to communicate - so we cannot ask her about what happened at the time. We have her personal paperwork, and a family member has power of attorney. So we are trying to figure out what we need to do. It has a great bearing on the Fairdeal scheme etc etc.

Any advice would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance.

 

[oysterman]

Make sure you contact the HSE immediately because they will have to adjust your aunt's contribution under Fair Deal and I don't think they'll retrospectively compensate her for the decline in her income.

Be very wary of running up legal expenses in this matter: under Fair Deal your aunt will effectively lose 80% of income recovered if you force the trustees to change their minds. Unless the pension involved is significant, the value to your aunt would consequently be just 10% of the full value of her husband's pension income (allowing for 50% survivor's pension and the 80% Fair Deal haircut). In other words, if the pension is small and your aunt is very unwell then she might never recover enough income to cover legal costs. Those costs, given inter-jurisdictional complications, might well be substantial.

The very best of luck. Your aunt is fortunate to have an advocate like you acting on her behalf.

 

[broccoli]

Thanks for your reply.

My aunt doesn't qualify for FD yet, based on her assets (worked hard, saved hard all her life). Based on our estimates, it will be be a few years before she will qualify for some some assistance, even without this pension. I have spoken to FD staff, and they have confirmed this using the rough figures of her savings etc. I have a separate thread on whether or not I should apply on her behalf, to start the clock ticking on the application, so to speak.

I think the pension will be worth more than 25K, based on the maintenance amount and the fact that I think her husband wasn't paying the full 50% of his pension as part of the maintanance agreement; but I am not 100% certain of the amounts.
I know that if my aunt was in the full of her health, she would fight this as she was very worried about this happening and did her level best to protect herself at the time. I also know that despite the marriage breakdown, her husband would have wanted to do right by her.

I don't know what would have happened with the pension preservation order at the time - would it have had to be presented to a UK court? I imagine different personnel are dealing with the pension now (i.e. after 20 years) - is it possible they just don't realise that this preservation order is in place.

thanks for your help.