A Shoebox Of Paperwork: Finding Every Pension He Had

If you are the executor or administrator of an estate, the question of how you find out if a deceased person had a pension usually arrives late, and it matters more than almost anything else you will deal with. Pensions are often the largest single thing a person owns, larger than the house once the mortgage is taken off, and they are also the easiest to miss. There is frequently no letter that says "you have a pension worth this much" sitting in the pile of paperwork. You have to go looking.

The short answer is that you work outward in a fixed order: start with the paperwork you already have, then trace the schemes you cannot find through the government's tracing service, then write to every provider you have identified and ask each one the same set of questions. You do not guess, and you do not stop at the first pension you find, because people accumulate several over a working life and forget most of them.

This page sets out that order the way a personal representative should actually do it, and explains why getting a value from each scheme before you settle anything is no longer optional housekeeping but a legal exposure you carry personally.

Start with the paperwork you already have

Before you contact anyone, gather what is in the house. Pensions leave a paper trail even when the person had stopped thinking about them, and the documents tell you which providers and former employers to approach.

Look specifically for annual benefit statements, which most schemes send once a year and which name the provider and a value. Look for payslips and P60s, because workplace pension contributions appear on them and each different employer usually means a different scheme. Look at recent bank statements for two things: regular pension income being paid in, which points to a pension already in payment, and contributions going out, which points to a personal or self-invested arrangement. Old correspondence, a policy pack in a drawer, or even a pension provider's name on a fridge magnet can all be the thread you pull.

Doing this thoroughly is the same discipline you need for the rest of the estate, and it is worth running the searches in parallel rather than one topic at a time. The methods for tracking down accounts and cover overlap heavily with pensions: our guides on finding bank accounts nobody knew about after a death and finding out whether there was a life policy when there is no paperwork use the same starting points, and you will save weeks by doing them together.

Trace the pensions you cannot find

Almost every estate has at least one pension that leaves no paperwork, usually from a job the person held decades ago with an employer that has since changed its name, merged, or closed. This is exactly what the government's free Pension Tracing Service exists for.

The service holds a database of workplace and personal pension schemes and their current contact details. You give it the name of a former employer or a pension provider, and it returns the administrator you now need to write to, even where the company itself no longer exists. It does not tell you whether the person had a pension with that employer, or what it is worth; it only gives you the door to knock on. You still have to write to each administrator yourself.

You can use it at gov.uk's Pension Tracing Service. Work through every employer named on the P60s and payslips you found, and every provider named on old statements. Keep a simple list as you go, one row per scheme, so you can see what you have asked and what you are still waiting on.

Do not forget the State Pension

The State Pension is not a fund you can inherit or cash in, but it still has to be dealt with, and it behaves differently depending on who survives. When someone dies, their State Pension stops, and the Department for Work and Pensions needs to be told promptly through the Tell Us Once service so that payments are corrected. Overpayments made after the date of death are recoverable, so this is not something to leave.

What a survivor can pick up from the deceased's State Pension record depends entirely on marital status. A surviving spouse or civil partner may inherit part of it under separate rules. A cohabiting partner cannot: as we explain in why you cannot inherit a State Pension from an unmarried partner, that income simply disappears from the household on the day of death. As executor you are not administering the State Pension the way you administer a private pot, but you do need to understand what stops and what, if anything, transfers.

Write to each provider, and ask the right questions

Once you have your list of schemes, write to every one. Send a copy of the death certificate and evidence that you are entitled to act, which means the grant of probate or letters of administration once you have it, or an explanation of where you are in the process. Providers will correspond with a personal representative on that basis.

Ask each provider the same questions, because the answers decide everything that follows:

1. The value of the arrangement at the date of death, and the type of pension it is, because a defined contribution pot and a defined benefit promise are treated completely differently.
2. Whether a nomination or expression of wish form is held, and who is named on it, because that decides who the money can be paid to.
3. Whether any death benefit is payable at the trustees' or scheme's discretion, or as of right to a named person.
4. What they intend to report to HMRC, and whether they will pay any tax due directly.

That fourth question matters more than executors realise. With a modern pension, the death benefit is usually paid at the discretion of the trustees, guided by the nomination form, and it passes outside the will. So the will can be silent on the biggest asset in the estate, and a beneficiary you have never spoken to can receive a pension directly from the provider. Whether a beneficiary is a named dependant or merely a nominee changes both who can be paid and how they are taxed, which is why understanding a scheme's rules early saves arguments later. If the deceased had wanted to provide for a vulnerable relative, for instance, the mechanics differ again, as we set out in leaving a pension to a disabled adult child and in whether you can leave a pension to grandchildren.

Public sector and uniformed schemes need extra care

If the person worked in the public sector or a uniformed service, the pension is almost always a defined benefit scheme run by a dedicated administrator, and the survivor benefits are governed by scheme rules rather than a pot of money. These are worth flagging separately because families frequently do not know which scheme applies, and the wrong assumption produces the wrong figure.

The armed forces, fire service, police, NHS, teaching and local government all have their own schemes, often in several versions depending on when the person served. If the deceased was a firefighter, for example, three different rulebooks could apply and each pays a survivor differently, as we explain in how the 1992, 2006 and 2015 firefighters' schemes each treat a widow. For the armed forces, remarriage history can affect what continues to be paid, which is covered in the armed forces widows' pension and remarriage rules. As executor you do not need to master each scheme, but you do need to write to the correct administrator and let them tell the family what the entitlement is in writing.

Value everything before you distribute a penny

This is the part that carries personal risk, and it is the reason the order above ends with valuation rather than starting with distribution.

A personal representative who distributes an estate and then discovers a further liability can be left personally liable to make up the shortfall. Pensions make this worse for two reasons. First, discretionary death benefits can take months to settle while trustees make their decision, so the estate can look finished when it is not. Second, and more importantly, the tax landscape is changing. From 6 April 2027 unused pension funds and certain lump sum death benefits are brought within the scope of inheritance tax as part of the deceased's estate. That means a pot you have not yet valued can generate a tax bill you are expected to account for.

Source: HM Treasury and HMRC, Inheritance Tax on unused pension funds and death benefits from 6 April 2027, published on gov.uk under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

The practical rule follows directly: get a date-of-death value from every scheme, understand which benefits fall inside the estate and which are paid at discretion, and settle what HMRC is owed before you hand money to beneficiaries. Distributing early is the mistake that turns a manageable job into a personal debt.

Keep the pension search inside the wider hunt for assets and debts

An estate is not only assets. The same shoebox that hides a forgotten pension often hides forgotten liabilities, and the two have to be reconciled before anything is distributed. Running the pension search alongside a proper search for what is owed keeps you from paying beneficiaries out of money that was never really the estate's to give.

Our guide on how to find every debt someone left behind sets out the parallel process, and the whole topic sits within our guide to pensions, nominations and death benefits, which explains who a scheme actually pays and why the nomination form matters so much. If reading this has made you think about the cover on your own life, and whether your family could meet a bill before your pensions were released, you can get life insurance quotes and have an FCA-authorised broker price it against your circumstances.

The scale of the administrative task is not small, either. Probate is a high-volume process handled by the courts every month, and delays there feed directly into how long a family waits for a pension to be paid, which is one more reason to start the search early rather than after the grant arrives.

Source: HM Courts and Tribunals Service, Family Court and probate management information (monthly), published on gov.uk under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Scotland and Northern Ireland

The way you find and value a pension is the same across the UK, but the document that proves your authority to act is not, and providers will ask for the right one.

In England and Wales you obtain a grant of probate, or letters of administration where there is no will. In Scotland the equivalent is confirmation, granted by the sheriff court, and pension administrators there will expect to see confirmation rather than probate. In Northern Ireland the grant of representation is issued by the Probate Office of the High Court. The pension rules themselves, and the 2027 inheritance tax change, apply across the whole of the UK, but make sure you request the form of authority that matches where the estate is being administered, or you will lose time correcting it.

Frequently asked questions

How do I find out if someone who has died had a pension?

Start with the paperwork: payslips, P60s, annual statements and bank statements showing contributions or pension income. Then use the government's Pension Tracing Service on gov.uk to identify schemes linked to each former employer, and write to every provider with the death certificate and proof of your authority to act. Work through every employer the person ever had, because most people build up several pensions and forget the older ones.

Does a pension provider have to tell the executor what the pension is worth?

Providers will give a personal representative a valuation once they have seen the death certificate and evidence of your appointment. Ask for the value at the date of death, the type of arrangement, and whether a nomination was held, because that decides who the money can be paid to. Ask as well what the provider intends to report to HMRC, since discretionary death benefits are often paid to a beneficiary directly rather than into the estate.

Can I distribute the estate before the pensions are settled?

It is safer not to. Death benefits can take months while trustees exercise discretion, and from 6 April 2027 unused pension funds are brought into the estate for inheritance tax, so distributing early risks leaving you personally short of the money needed to settle the bill with HMRC. Value every scheme, settle what is owed, and only then pay beneficiaries.