The Expression of Wish Form Cohabitees Never Fill In

The people who decide where your pension death benefit goes are the scheme's trustees, not you — and the first thing they read is your expression of wish form. So the honest answer to making sure it reaches your partner when you are not married is: fill in that form, name your partner clearly on it, and back it with evidence that the two of you share a life. The form does not force the trustees' hand, but it is the single strongest signal you can send them, and a blank or out-of-date one is how unmarried partners get overlooked.

This matters far more for an unmarried couple than for a married one. A pension death benefit paid at the trustees' discretion does not follow your will and does not follow the intestacy rules, so a partner the law would otherwise ignore can still receive it — but only if the trustees choose them. Left to guess, trustees look at who is financially dependent on you and who your paperwork points to. If the most recent form on their file names a parent, or an ex, or nobody at all, your partner starts the conversation on the back foot at the worst possible time.

This page explains how to complete and evidence the form as an unmarried couple, why "not legally binding" is actually the feature that keeps the money out of your estate, and where the form runs out of road — the point at which life cover, which you can direct with certainty, takes over.

The short answer: trustees decide, and they read the form first

Most modern pensions — workplace defined contribution schemes and personal pensions alike — pay death benefits at the discretion of the scheme administrator or trustees. When you die, they have to decide who should receive the pot, and they make that decision by looking at your circumstances and at the wishes you have recorded. The expression of wish form, sometimes called a nomination or a beneficiary form, is where you record those wishes.

It is not a legally binding instruction, and it cannot be. If it were binding, the benefit would be treated as something you owned and could give away, which would drag it back into your estate. Because it is a request, the trustees retain the final say, and that is precisely what keeps the money separate from your estate. The form is powerful not because it commands the trustees but because it tells them, in your own words, what you wanted — and trustees give real weight to a clear, recent nomination.

Why the death benefit sits outside your will

It surprises people that the largest sum many families ever receive on a death is not controlled by the will at all. A discretionary pension death benefit passes under the scheme's trust, not through the estate. Your executors do not distribute it, probate does not gate it, and the intestacy rules never touch it. For an unmarried couple this is a rare piece of good news: it is one of the few things that can reach a surviving partner directly, without depending on the rules that otherwise leave cohabitees with nothing.

But the flip side is that your will is the wrong tool here. Leaving "my pension to my partner" in your will achieves nothing, because the will has no authority over it. The only document that speaks to the trustees is the nomination form held by the scheme. If you have updated your will to reflect your relationship but never touched your pension nominations, you have secured the smaller asset and left the larger one pointing wherever it pointed years ago.

Why "not binding" is a feature, not a flaw

The discretionary nature of these payments frustrates people who want certainty, and it is worth being straight about the trade-off. The reason schemes keep the decision with trustees is tax. Because no beneficiary has a fixed right to the money, it is generally not counted as part of your estate for inheritance tax. If you could bindingly direct it to a named person, that treatment would be at risk.

So the absence of a guarantee is the price of keeping the benefit out of your estate. For an unmarried couple, where anything left to a partner in the estate itself is fully exposed to inheritance tax with no spouse exemption to soften it, that tax treatment is valuable. The sensible response is not to wish the discretion away but to make the trustees' decision as easy as possible — a clear nomination and strong evidence — and then to use a separate, guaranteed tool for the part you cannot leave to discretion.

Completing the form as an unmarried couple

The mechanics are simple, and getting them right removes most of the risk. Name your partner in full, give their date of birth and address, state your relationship plainly as your partner or cohabitant, and if the form allows a percentage split, make the allocation add up and reflect what you actually want. If you have children or others you would also want provided for, name them too, with shares, rather than leaving the trustees to infer them.

Where a form offers a free-text box, use it. A sentence stating that you and your partner live together, share your finances and are financially interdependent is exactly the kind of context trustees weigh, and it costs you nothing to write. Vague forms create work for your partner later; specific ones close the questions down before they are asked.

Two small habits protect the work you have done. Keep a copy of every completed form, and note the date you sent it, so that if a scheme cannot later find your nomination you can show what you submitted and when. And tell your partner which schemes hold a form naming them, because after a death it falls to your partner to contact each provider, and they cannot claim from a scheme they do not know exists. A short list of your pensions, kept with your will, does more good here than most people expect.

The evidence that helps trustees say yes

Trustees deciding an unmarried partner's claim are really asking one question: was this person genuinely sharing a life with the member, and financially bound up with them? The more of that picture is already on record, the fewer questions your partner has to field while grieving. Helpful evidence includes a joint tenancy or joint mortgage, joint bank accounts, household bills in both names at the same address, a shared financial commitment such as a loan, and wills in which you name each other.

None of these is a magic key, and no single document guarantees the outcome. But together they build the interdependence trustees are looking for, and they turn your partner's claim from an assertion into a documented fact. It is worth spending an evening making sure that at least some of this exists in both names, rather than assuming the relationship speaks for itself. It does not speak to trustees who never met you.

Every pot has its own form

One of the most common and expensive mistakes is treating this as a single job. It is not. Every pension you hold has its own nomination, held by its own scheme, and they do not talk to each other. The workplace scheme from a job you left a decade ago still has whatever form you signed on your first day there — quite possibly naming a parent, or a previous partner, or no one. Updating your current employer's scheme does nothing for the old one.

Two traps deserve a specific mention. If you have paid additional voluntary contributions, that pot can sit under a separate arrangement with a separate nomination you may never have completed, which we cover in how additional voluntary contributions carry their own nomination form. And if you have already retired and moved a pot into drawdown, an old form signed decades ago can still govern who receives what is left, as we explain in why the form you signed years ago still governs a drawdown pot. Track down every scheme you have ever paid into, and complete a form for each. Update them whenever your circumstances change, and at least every few years, so that a stale form never speaks for you.

Where the form runs out, and cover takes over

For all its importance, the nomination form cannot promise anything, and for some people the pension pot is modest or the scheme's rules are restrictive. Occupational and public sector schemes in particular can limit death benefits to a spouse or a formally recognised financial dependant, which places an extra burden on an unmarried partner to prove their status — a hurdle we look at in whether a teacher can nominate an unmarried partner. Where the pension alone would leave your partner short, or where you want certainty rather than discretion, life cover is the answer.

A life policy lets you name beneficiaries with certainty, and writing it in trust does for the payout what the pension's trust does automatically: it keeps the money out of your estate and delivers it to your partner directly, without probate and without the delays that catch unmarried couples hardest. Where the home is the pressing worry, cover sized against the mortgage keeps a roof over the survivor's head — a concern that runs alongside arrangements like a Help to Buy equity loan when a partner dies. When you want to see what that would involve, you can get life insurance quotes and have an FCA-authorised broker set the cover against your pension provision and your partner's actual needs.

Does this differ across the UK?

Pension rules and inheritance tax are set on a UK-wide basis, so the position described here is the same in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The differences that matter are between schemes rather than between nations: a defined contribution personal pension, a private workplace scheme, and a public sector scheme such as the NHS or teachers' schemes each have their own rules on who can be nominated and what the trustees may consider. Read your own scheme's death benefit rules, because that document, not a general summary, decides what your partner can receive. For the wider set of steps an unmarried couple should take, our guide to dependants and unusual family shapes puts the pension nomination alongside wills, home ownership and cover.

Frequently asked questions

Is an expression of wish form legally binding?

No. It tells the scheme trustees who you want the death benefit paid to, and they take it seriously, but the decision remains theirs. That discretion is usually what keeps the payment outside your estate for inheritance tax, so the absence of a guarantee is the price of the tax treatment. The way to make it count is a clear, recent form backed by evidence of your shared life.

What evidence helps an unmarried partner's case?

Anything showing a shared life and financial interdependence: a joint tenancy or mortgage, joint accounts, bills in both names at the same address, and wills naming each other. Trustees ask about dependency, so the more of that already on file, the fewer questions your partner faces afterwards. No single document is decisive, but together they turn a claim into a documented fact.

How often should I update it?

Whenever your circumstances change, and at least every few years, separately for every pension you hold including old workplace schemes and additional voluntary contributions. Forms left over from a previous relationship are a common and costly oversight, because trustees start from whatever the most recent form on their file says. Treat it as a recurring check, not a one-off task.