No will, no executor, no contact: what happens to a public service pension death benefit

Most guidance about pensions and death assumes there is a will, an executor named in it, and somebody who knows which schemes were involved. A great many estates have none of those things. Somebody died without a will, or the person named as executor has died too, or the family has quietly agreed that one of them will “sort it out” without anyone telling the pension scheme who that is.

That gap now matters more than it used to, because from 6 April 2027 unused pension funds and pension death benefits come into the estate for inheritance tax. In August 2026 HMRC published a second technical note setting out how the process will work, and buried in it is a rule that most families would never guess at. If nobody administering the estate makes contact, the scheme does not wait. It identifies a beneficiary under its own rules and pays out.

This guide covers who is entitled to deal with a public service pension scheme when there is no will, what that person has to prove before the scheme will tell them anything, what happens if they never turn up, and where the tax lands afterwards. It sits alongside our executor’s guide to the April 2027 inheritance tax change and the scheme-by-scheme claim guides for the Civil Service and Teachers’ Pension schemes.

The scheme does not wait for you

This is the part that surprises people, so it is worth stating plainly before anything else.

HMRC’s technical note of 27 August 2026 tells pension scheme administrators what to do when nobody from the estate has contacted them. The instruction is not to hold the money until somebody surfaces. It is the opposite:

“If the pension scheme administrator has not been contacted by a personal representative, the pension scheme administrators must proceed to identify beneficiaries in accordance with the scheme rules. Once a beneficiary has been identified and even though there has been no contact from any person administering the estate, the pension scheme administrator should distribute the benefits without further delay.”

The scheme is then recommended, not required, to tell the person receiving the money three things: that it does not know who the personal representative is, that the pension may be subject to inheritance tax, and that they should find out who is administering the estate.

HMRC’s own worked example shows how ordinary this is. A man dies at 51 without a will, leaving a partner and three teenage children. The partner tells the scheme he has died but says she is not administering the estate. His brother takes that on instead. The trustees run their discretionary process, hear nothing from the brother, and pay the money to the partner twelve weeks after the death. She takes it as a drawdown account. The brother, who is the one dealing with the tax, has never spoken to the scheme at all.

Nobody in that example has done anything wrong. The scheme followed its rules, the partner answered honestly, the brother got on with the estate. The money simply moved before the two halves of the problem met each other.

Who is allowed to deal with the scheme when there is no will

A pension scheme will not discuss a member’s benefits with whoever rings up first. It has to satisfy itself that the person asking has authority to act for the estate. Where there is a will and a named executor who is acting, that is straightforward. Where there is not, there are two things to understand.

First: there is a legal queue

When someone dies without a will in England or Wales, the right to administer the estate is not a matter of who volunteers. Rule 22 of the Non-Contentious Probate Rules 1987 sets out classes of person in strict order of entitlement: the surviving husband, wife or civil partner first, then children, then parents, then brothers and sisters of the whole blood, and onwards through half-blood siblings, grandparents, and aunts and uncles. You only reach the next class once the one above it is empty.

The plain-English version on gov.uk puts it this way: “If the person did not leave a will, the most ‘entitled’ person can apply to become the administrator of the estate. This is the closest living relative.” It also states a limit that catches people out: “You cannot apply if you’re the partner of the person but were not their husband, wife or civil partner when they died.”

That is a genuinely hard sentence for an unmarried partner of thirty years to read, and it is worth knowing early rather than discovering it at the probate stage. It does not stop the scheme paying a death grant to that partner, because the scheme decides that separately under its own rules. It stops them administering the estate.

Second: you can ask before you are formally appointed

You do not have to wait until a grant is issued before a scheme will talk to you. HMRC’s technical note creates a working category for exactly this situation:

“If the deceased did not leave a Will, or if all the named executors are unable or unwilling to act, an individual who has reason to believe they will become the personal representative (‘prospective personal representative’) can request information from the pension scheme administrator.”

HMRC’s examples show what that looks like in practice. In one, a man dies intestate leaving two sons who agree between themselves that one of them will administer the estate. That son writes to both of his father’s schemes with evidence of his identity and a signed declaration: that he believes there was no valid will, that he has reason to believe he will become the personal representative, and that he is administering the estate alone. He explains his reasoning, which is simply that he is one of two sons, they have agreed, and there is no surviving spouse. Both schemes accept it.

In another, the sole executor named in the will has herself died. A surviving friend who is a named beneficiary steps in, supplying his identity, a copy of the will showing he is named in it, and a declaration confirming the executor’s death and explaining why he believes he will become the personal representative rather than anyone ahead of him in the order of entitlement.

The pattern in both is the same. You are not asserting a right. You are explaining, in writing and with evidence, why you are the person the queue points to.

One practical note for families where several people are named. Where multiple personal representatives are administering an estate, HMRC says schemes “may wish to consider whether it is appropriate to correspond with one lead person only”. If your family has three executors and only one of them is doing the work, expect the scheme to want a single point of contact.

Three UK systems, and they do not use the same words

Public service schemes have members in every part of the United Kingdom, and the process for getting authority over an estate is not the same in each. Guidance written for England and Wales is frequently presented as though it were UK-wide. It is not.

• England and Wales. The court issues one of three documents: a grant of probate where there is a will naming an acting executor, letters of administration with will annexed where there is a will but no executor who can act, and letters of administration where there is no will. The umbrella term for all three is a grant of representation. The person acting under letters of administration is an administrator, not an executor.
• Scotland. Different vocabulary entirely. Where there is no will, the sheriff court appoints an executor-dative, normally the surviving spouse or civil partner. That person then obtains confirmation, which the Scottish Government describes as “the legal document which gives the executor authority to receive payments due to the estate and to make payments due on the estate”. Nobody in Scotland applies for probate.
• Northern Ireland. Uses the same phrase as England and Wales, letters of administration, but under its own legislation and through the Northern Ireland Probate Office rather than HMCTS.

If you are ringing a scheme’s bereavement line from Scotland and they ask whether you have probate, the answer is not “no”. It is that you are applying for confirmation, and the two are equivalents.

What the scheme will ask you to prove

HMRC has published draft guidance on evidencing identity and authority. On identity it is deliberately hands-off, saying schemes will already have their own requirements. On authority to act, it lists what a scheme could reasonably ask for, and the list is worth having before you write rather than after:

• A death certificate confirming the date of death and the name of the deceased.
• A certified copy of the will and any codicils, where there is a valid will.
• Where executors named in a will are acting, a signed declaration from them confirming they have accepted the role and intend to act, that they believe the enclosed copy is the true last will, and whether there are other named executors and if so whether those others have accepted.
• Where no named executor is acting, a signed declaration from whoever intends to administer the estate, explaining why the named executors are not acting and confirming their own intention to take it on.

One timing detail here is easy to miss, and it has real consequences. HMRC says that once reasonable information and documentation “have been provided to the pension scheme administrator, any applicable response period set out in the regulations will begin”.

The clock starts when your evidence lands, not when you first wrote. A letter that arrives without a death certificate has not started anything. If you are working to the inheritance tax deadline, that distinction is worth several weeks.

Where the tax actually lands

There are two separate questions here and they get run together constantly. One is who receives the money. The other is whether it counts as part of the estate for inheritance tax. They have different answers and different decision-makers.

On the first, most public service lump sum death grants are paid at the scheme’s discretion. The LGPS states it about as directly as it can be stated: “Your local pension fund has absolute discretion over who receives any lump sum death grant.” The fund may pay the people named on an expression of wish form, or the personal representatives, or anyone who appears to have been a relative or dependant. Your nomination is taken into account. It does not bind.

That discretion is not an administrative quirk. It is the thing that historically kept the money out of the estate for inheritance tax. HMRC’s Inheritance Tax Manual puts it like this:

“Where pension scheme providers have discretion over the payment of death benefits, and the member could not have created a situation where scheme providers had no discretion, the payment is not treated as part of the estate whether or not any letter of wishes is followed. This is the case even where discretion is exercised in favour of the estate or the personal representatives.”

Read that last sentence twice, because it answers a question families ask a lot. A genuinely discretionary death grant does not become part of the estate merely because the scheme decided to pay it to the estate. The test is whether the scheme had a real choice, not who ended up with the money.

The narrow exception runs the other way. If a scheme’s rules were such that the member could have forced a particular outcome, for example by declining to nominate anyone where the rules then require payment to the estate, HMRC treats the member as having had a general power over the money, and it falls into the estate. Whether any given public service scheme’s rules work that way is a question about that scheme’s rules, and HMRC’s own manual tells its staff to take internal advice before running the argument. It is not something to settle from a website, and this one is not going to pretend otherwise.

From 6 April 2027 a second, broader rule sits on top of all this: most unused pension funds and death benefits are brought into the estate anyway. Our executor’s guide covers what is caught, what is excluded, and what the personal representatives have to do about it.

If you do not know which schemes they belonged to

A long public service career often means several schemes, plus older private or workplace pots from jobs before it. The government runs a free service to help track down the schemes themselves, and its limits are worth knowing before you lean on it.

The Pension Tracing Service on gov.uk will give you contact details for a pension scheme when you have the scheme’s name or the name of a former employer. Its own page is blunt about the limit: “They cannot tell you whether you have a pension, or what its value is.”

So it solves the “who do I write to” problem and nothing beyond it. Whether a pension exists, and what it is worth, has to come from the scheme once you have reached it and proved who you are.

The deadlines that matter

Three deadlines run in parallel, and only one of them waits for you to be organised.

• Inheritance tax: the end of the sixth month after the death. gov.uk gives the worked example: “if the person died in January, you must pay Inheritance Tax by 31 July.” And: “HMRC will charge you interest if you do not pay by the due date.” This clock does not pause while the family works out who is in charge.
• The unique code, before you can apply for probate. In England and Wales, where inheritance tax is due, you start paying it, HMRC then sends a unique code, and you need that code before the probate application can go in. It is a sequence, not a set of parallel tasks.
• Two years, for the scheme’s own payment. Public service schemes generally need to pay a lump sum death benefit within two years of being notified of the death, or a tax charge can apply. Teachers’ Pensions states the consequence in its own words: “If a death grant isn’t paid within two years of being notified of a death, when the death grant is paid it’ll be subject to a tax charge. This could be as much as 45% of the death grant.” Notifying the scheme early therefore protects the family even if nothing else is resolved.

And one at the far end. Once the estate is finished, personal representatives can apply to HMRC for clearance, which discharges them from liability for tax on pension benefits nobody knew about at the time. They cannot apply until at least 12 months after the death and at least 3 months after the unique code arrives, precisely so that forgotten pensions have time to surface first.

Common questions

The pension has already been paid to someone else. Can it be undone?

Not by the estate. Where a scheme has exercised its discretion and paid a beneficiary, that decision belongs to the scheme, not to the personal representatives. What the estate can do is establish the value of what was paid, because that figure may be needed for the inheritance tax account. If you believe the scheme handled its decision improperly, the route is a complaint to the scheme and then, if needed, the Pensions Ombudsman.

I am the partner but we never married. Can I administer the estate?

Not where there is no will. gov.uk is explicit that you cannot apply if you were not the husband, wife or civil partner when they died. That is separate from whether the scheme can pay you a death grant, which it may well be able to do at its discretion, and separate again from any survivor’s pension, which depends on the scheme’s own definition of a qualifying partner.

Do I have to wait for the grant before contacting the scheme?

No. Someone who has reason to believe they will become the personal representative can request information as a prospective personal representative, supplying evidence of identity and a signed declaration explaining the position. The scheme may otherwise pay out without knowing who is administering the estate, so early contact is the point at which the estate gets any visibility at all.

Does an expression of wish form decide who gets the money?

It guides the decision rather than making it. In the LGPS the fund has absolute discretion and takes the form into account. Across UK pensions generally, HMRC notes that nominations are “generally not binding” and are “simply letters of wishes that record what the member would like to happen”. A current form still helps, because it tells trustees who the member had in mind and shortens the discretionary process.

Is any of this different in Scotland?

The pension side is the same, because the scheme rules and the HMRC guidance are UK-wide. The estate side is not. Where there is no will, the sheriff court appoints an executor-dative, who then obtains confirmation rather than probate. If you are dealing with a Scottish estate, use the Scottish terms with the court and expect the scheme to recognise confirmation as the equivalent document.

Pension Plain’s take

The instruction to schemes to pay out rather than wait is, on its own terms, the right one. The alternative is money sitting frozen while a family that may not even know a pension exists fails to contact an administrator it cannot name. Holding benefits indefinitely because nobody wrote a letter would harm more people than it protected.

What is odd is the asymmetry in how firmly the two halves are expressed. The scheme must identify beneficiaries and should pay without further delay. But telling the person receiving the money that it might carry an inheritance tax liability, and that they ought to find out who is administering the estate, is only recommended. The obligation to move the money is stronger than the obligation to explain what has just landed on the recipient.

From April 2027 that gap gets more expensive, because the amounts involved start counting towards an estate that somebody else is responsible for reporting. The person best placed to close it is not the scheme. It is the member, while alive, leaving a list of which schemes they belong to and a current expression of wish, and it is whoever ends up administering the estate, by writing to the schemes early rather than waiting for a grant they do not yet have.

One caveat on all of this. The technical note it rests on is, in HMRC’s own words, not draft guidance, but the specimen forms attached to it are drafts. A third technical note is expected in autumn 2026, covering intestacy among other things, and the full guidance is not due until spring 2027. The mechanics described here are settled. The paperwork is not.

Fact-checked: 29 August 2026