LGPS And My Live-In Partner: No Form, Still Paid?

If you are in the Local Government Pension Scheme and you and your partner never married, the honest answer to whether your partner gets your LGPS pension is: they can, and you no longer need a signed nomination form for it to happen — but only if your relationship meets the scheme's conditions. That is a real change from how the scheme used to work, and it catches people out in both directions. Some assume a cohabiting partner gets nothing without a form; others assume living together is automatically enough. Neither is quite right.

The reason the form is no longer decisive is a Supreme Court case, Brewster, decided in 2017. Before it, an unmarried partner in the local government scheme had to be formally nominated, while a spouse never did. The court held that unequal treatment was unlawful, and the LGPS across the UK dropped the nomination requirement for cohabiting partners as a result. What did not disappear are the relationship conditions and a rule about when your membership was built up — and those are what actually decide whether your partner is paid.

This page walks through the LGPS cohabiting partner survivor pension conditions one at a time, explains the membership test that trips people up, and sets out what evidence the fund will want if the worst happens.

What the Brewster ruling actually changed

Denise Brewster's partner was a member of the local government scheme in Northern Ireland. When he died, she was refused a survivor's pension because he had not filled in the form nominating her, even though they had lived together for years and were engaged. In 2017 the Supreme Court held that requiring a cohabiting partner to be nominated, when a spouse needed no such step, was unlawful discrimination.

The practical effect across the LGPS was that the nomination requirement for cohabiting partners was removed. So the first thing to take from this is reassurance: if your partner did not fill in a form, that alone does not stop them being paid. But the case decided a narrow point about the form. It did not sweep away the conditions that define who counts as a qualifying cohabiting partner, and it is those conditions, not the form, that the fund now tests. We look at the boundaries of the ruling more widely in the guide to whether you are entitled to a partner's pension if you never married.

The conditions your relationship has to meet

The LGPS sets out what makes a cohabiting partnership a qualifying one. The exact wording varies between the English and Welsh, Scottish and Northern Ireland schemes, but the shape is consistent. Broadly, at the date of death all of the following need to be true.

• You were living together as if you were a married couple or civil partners.
• Neither of you was married to, or in a civil partnership with, someone else, and you were both free to marry each other or form a civil partnership.
• Neither of you was living with a third person as if married to them.
• You were either financially interdependent, or your partner was financially dependent on you.
• The relationship had existed for a continuous period ending with the member's death — the length of that period is set by the scheme rules, so it is one to confirm with your fund.

Financial interdependence is the condition people underestimate. It does not mean one of you kept the other; it means your finances were bound together in the ordinary way a couple's are — a joint account, a shared mortgage or tenancy, joint responsibility for household bills, each of you relying on the other's income to keep the home running. A couple who kept everything rigidly separate can find this is the condition that is hardest to evidence, which is a reason to think about it now rather than leave it to be reconstructed later.

The 1 April 2008 membership test

This is the part that surprises people, and it is easy to miss. A cohabiting partner's survivor pension in the LGPS is generally worked out on the membership you built up from 1 April 2008 onwards. Cohabiting partner survivor benefits were introduced into the scheme from that date, so service before it may count for little or nothing towards your partner's pension, even where it counts perfectly well towards yours.

For a long-serving member the effect can be blunt. If most of your local government career was before 2008, a surviving cohabiting partner may qualify for a survivor's pension based only on the slice of membership after that date, which can be a modest fraction of what a spouse would receive on the whole of your service. A younger member whose entire career is post-2008 is not affected in the same way. Your administering authority can tell you which parts of your membership actually count for a cohabiting partner, and that is a specific question worth asking rather than assuming the headline pension applies.

If you left local government some years ago and are now a deferred member, the position is different again, and the death benefits from a pension you stopped paying into can be smaller than you would expect — we set that out in how leaving the LGPS shrinks your death grant.

Is a partner nomination form still needed?

Strictly, no — a cohabiting partner form is no longer a precondition of entitlement to the survivor's pension, which is exactly what Brewster changed. But there are two good reasons to fill one in anyway if your fund still offers it.

The first is evidence. A form completed while you were both alive, naming your partner and describing the relationship, is useful proof of your intentions and of the relationship's existence when the fund comes to assess a claim. It does not create the entitlement, but it helps establish it. The second is that the LGPS also pays a separate lump sum death grant, and for that grant the fund exercises discretion guided by your expression of wish. That form does still steer where the lump sum goes, so it is well worth keeping current even though the survivor's pension no longer depends on it. We cover that grant, and why it is paid regardless of how long you have been in the scheme, in the LGPS death grant of three times pay with no qualifying period.

What evidence the fund will want

Because the entitlement now rests on the relationship rather than a form, the fund will ask a surviving partner to prove the conditions were met. Knowing what tends to be asked for lets you keep the right things.

• Proof you lived together at the same address — a joint tenancy or mortgage, a council tax bill, correspondence to both of you at the same home over a period of time.
• Proof of financial interdependence — a joint bank account, shared bills, evidence that each of you relied on the other's income.
• Confirmation that you were both free to marry or form a civil partnership, which can matter where a previous marriage was involved.

None of this is exotic paperwork; it is the ordinary residue of a shared life. The trouble is that a grieving partner may have to assemble it at the worst possible time, sometimes years after the documents were filed away. Keeping a simple folder of the key items, and telling your partner where it is, spares them a fight with the fund during the weeks they can least manage one.

How the survivor's pension is taxed, and the 2027 change

An LGPS survivor's pension is a defined benefit — an income paid for the rest of your partner's life, worked out from your membership, not a pot of money. It is taxed as income in the normal way when it is paid, against your partner's own tax position.

That also means it is not caught by the inheritance tax change coming to pensions in April 2027. The change aims at unused defined contribution pots and lump sum death benefits; a dependant's scheme pension from a final salary arrangement like the LGPS sits outside it and continues to be taxed exactly as now. A cohabiting partner receiving an LGPS survivor's pension does not need to worry that the 2027 headlines apply to that income.

Whether to marry or form a civil partnership is a separate question, and it can change more than the survivor's pension — it affects the state pension position and the whole inheritance picture. We weigh it up in whether getting married would change what your partner inherits. It is worth doing that maths with your own scheme's figures rather than a general rule.

What the LGPS does not cover, and where cover helps

Even a qualifying cohabiting partner may find the LGPS survivor's pension is smaller than expected, particularly where the 2008 membership test cuts your service in half for this purpose. And the state safety net for unmarried partners is thin: many contributory bereavement benefits were built around marriage, and although bereavement support has been extended to cohabiting partners with children, National Insurance contributions do not buy the cover people assume — a point we untangle in why Class 3 top-ups buy state pension, not bereavement cover.

Where the scheme leaves a gap, life cover written for your partner can fill it cleanly and without the membership tests and conditions the pension applies. You can get life insurance quotes and have an FCA-authorised broker size a policy against the shortfall your own LGPS figures reveal. The rest of the pension death benefit questions — nominations, dependants and who a scheme actually pays — sit in our guide to pensions, nominations and death benefits.

Scotland and Northern Ireland

The LGPS is not one scheme but a family of them, administered separately in England and Wales, in Scotland and in Northern Ireland, and the cohabiting partner rules, while similar in shape, are set out in each scheme's own regulations. Brewster itself was a Northern Ireland case, and its principle was applied across all of them, so the removal of the nomination requirement holds throughout — but the precise conditions, and the way the membership test is worded, should be confirmed with the fund that actually holds your record.

The wider law around a partner's position also differs by nation. Scotland gives a surviving cohabitant certain rights to apply to a court from a deceased partner's estate, within a strict time limit, which do not exist in the same form elsewhere; Northern Ireland has its own succession rules again. Those sit alongside the pension rather than governing it, but they matter for everything the LGPS does not cover, so a cohabiting couple is wise to look at the pension and the estate together, under the law where they live.

Frequently asked questions

Does the LGPS need a nomination form for a cohabiting partner?

Not since the Supreme Court's decision in Brewster in 2017, which struck down a nomination requirement as unlawful discrimination in a public service scheme. The relationship conditions still have to be met, and a completed form remains useful evidence, but it is no longer a precondition of payment of the survivor's pension. The separate lump sum death grant is still guided by your expression of wish, so that form is worth keeping current.

What conditions must a cohabiting partner meet in the LGPS?

Broadly, you must have been living together as if married or in a civil partnership, free to marry each other, and either financially interdependent or with the survivor financially dependent on the member, for a continuous period set by the rules. The fund will ask for documentary evidence, so keeping proof of a shared home and joined-up finances makes a later claim far easier to establish.

Does it matter when I built up my LGPS membership?

Yes. Cohabiting partner survivor benefits generally relate to membership built up from 1 April 2008 onwards, so a member who left local government before then may find a partner qualifies for little or nothing. Your administering authority can confirm which parts of your membership actually count, which is worth asking about specifically rather than assuming your whole service applies.