Do I Need Probate For My Husband's Private Pension?

In most cases you do not need probate for your husband's private pension. Workplace and personal pensions are usually held under a trust and paid out at the provider's discretion, which means they sit outside the will and outside the estate that a grant of probate deals with. You claim them by telling the provider, not by waiting for a court.

That is genuinely good news at a hard moment, because it means the pension is often one of the first things that can actually be paid while the rest of the estate is still frozen. But there is a change coming that makes this more confusing, not less. From 6 April 2027, unused pension funds are counted in the value of the estate for inheritance tax — even though the money still does not pass under the will. So you can end up with a pension that needs no probate to be paid, yet still has to be reported and may still carry a tax bill.

Those two ideas feel contradictory, and keeping them apart is the whole point of this page. Whether a pension needs probate is one question. Whether it counts towards inheritance tax is a completely different question. They have always had different answers, and after April 2027 the gap between them is going to catch a lot of families out.

The short answer: usually no probate for the pension itself

Probate — or confirmation, as it is called in Scotland — is the legal authority an executor needs to deal with the assets that make up someone's estate. A bank will usually want to see it before releasing a large sole account; a share registrar will want it before transferring holdings. It is the key that unlocks property that passed under the will.

A discretionary pension is not that kind of property. Because it is held under trust and paid at the provider's discretion, it never becomes part of the estate the executor administers, so there is nothing for a grant of probate to unlock. The provider can pay the chosen beneficiary directly, often long before probate has been granted for everything else. If you are wondering whether the same is true of other assets you thought passed automatically, the parallel is a bank account in two names — and it is not always as simple as people assume, as we explain in whether a joint account really passes straight to the survivor.

Why a pension sits outside the will

The mechanism is worth understanding, because it explains almost everything else on this page. When your husband joined a workplace scheme or took out a personal pension, the death benefits were set up to be paid at the discretion of the trustees or the provider. He could tell them who he would like the money to go to — that is what a nomination form or expression of wish does — but the final decision rests with them, not with him and not with his will.

This is deliberate, and it exists precisely so the pension does not fall into the estate. Because the trustees choose the recipient, the money has never legally belonged to the deceased at the moment of death in the way a bank balance has, so it passes outside the will and, historically, outside inheritance tax as well. That last part is what changes in 2027, but the payment route does not change with it.

One consequence catches families every year: the will and the nomination form can say different things, and the nomination usually wins for the pension. A will leaving everything to a new spouse does not override a pension form still naming an ex. That is why we keep saying to check the forms, not just the will.

What the provider asks for instead

Since there is no grant to hand over, the provider runs its own process. Expect them to ask for a certified copy of the death certificate, proof of your own identity, and a completed claim form. Where the pension is paid at discretion, they may also ask questions about who depended on the deceased and who the potential beneficiaries are, because they have to make a genuine decision rather than simply follow an instruction.

If the person claiming is an unmarried partner, that questioning goes further, because the trustees have to satisfy themselves that the relationship qualifies under the scheme rules. That can mean producing evidence of living together and of shared finances, which is a real piece of work in the weeks after a death — we set out the documents involved in what trustees ask for when an unmarried partner claims.

It is also worth being clear about authority. If you held a lasting power of attorney for your husband, it ended the moment he died and gives you no standing to claim the pension — a common and painful misunderstanding we cover in why a power of attorney dies with the person. After death, it is the executors and the pension's own beneficiaries who deal with the provider, under the scheme's process rather than under any power of attorney.

The distinction that changes on 6 April 2027

Here is the part that will confuse everyone, so it is worth reading slowly. From 6 April 2027, unused pension funds are brought into the value of a person's estate for inheritance tax purposes. That does not change how the money is paid — it still goes to the beneficiary under the scheme rules, still without probate. What changes is that the value of the pot now has to be added in when working out whether inheritance tax is due on the estate.

So the pension acquires a split personality. For the question "who gets it and how", it is still outside the will and outside the estate. For the question "is inheritance tax due", it is now inside the estate. The same pot, two different answers, depending on which question you are asking. Losing sight of that is the single easiest way to get the position wrong from 2027 onwards.

None of this makes every pension taxable. Inheritance tax is only due where the whole estate, now including the pension, is above the available tax-free thresholds, and transfers to a surviving spouse or civil partner remain exempt. The change is about which pots are counted, not about a new tax rate.

How the tax can be due without reaching the executor

The awkward practical effect of counting a pension for inheritance tax while paying it outside the will is that the tax can be reportable on money the executor never actually handles. The personal representatives are responsible for reporting the value of the estate — pension included — even though the pension itself was paid straight to a beneficiary who may be a different person entirely.

That creates a coordination problem the government has designed rules to manage, with arrangements for the tax attributable to a pension to be met from the pension itself rather than falling on the rest of the estate. The detail matters less than the instruction that follows from it: if a pension is in the picture, do not assume it is somebody else's problem to report. Ask the provider what value they will report and how any tax on the pension will be settled, and make sure whoever is administering the estate knows the pension exists.

Not every pension death benefit is a lump sum from a pot, either. If your husband had bought an annuity, the death benefit position can be very different, and in some cases there is nothing to pay out at all — a hard outcome we describe in buying a single-life annuity that pays nothing on an early death. Knowing which type of pension you are dealing with comes before any question about probate or tax.

How long it takes, and what to do first

Timescales vary widely. A straightforward case — a clear nomination, one obvious beneficiary, a simple defined contribution pot — can pay out in a few weeks. Where the trustees have to gather information about who depended on the deceased, or where there are competing potential beneficiaries, it commonly runs to several months. The published court figures on grants of probate show how long the surrounding estate administration can take, but the pension often moves faster than the rest precisely because it does not wait for a grant.

Source: HM Courts & Tribunals Service, Family Court and probate management information, published under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

The most useful thing you can do is contact every provider quickly, because nothing at all starts until they have been told there has been a death. Track down each pension — old workplace schemes are easy to forget — and ask each one for its claim form and its list of requirements. If you are unsure how many pensions there were, the government's Pension Tracing Service can help you find lost schemes. Getting the notifications out early is worth more than any single document you can produce later.

Scotland and Northern Ireland

In Scotland the process that corresponds to probate is called confirmation, and it does the same job: it authorises the executor to deal with the deceased's estate. The core point on this page holds just the same north of the border — a discretionary pension sits outside the estate and so outside confirmation, and can be paid by the provider without it. Only the name of the process changes.

In Northern Ireland a grant of probate is used much as it is in England and Wales, issued through the local probate office. Inheritance tax is a UK-wide tax, so the April 2027 change to how unused pension funds are counted applies across all four nations in the same way. Wherever you are, the two questions stay separate: whether the pension needs a grant to be paid, and whether it counts towards inheritance tax.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need probate to claim my husband's private pension?

Usually not. Most workplace and personal pensions are held under trust and paid at the provider's discretion, so they do not pass under the will and no grant of probate is needed to release them. The provider will ask for the death certificate, identification and a claim form, and where the benefit is discretionary they may ask about who depended on him before deciding who to pay.

If the pension is outside the will, why does inheritance tax apply?

Because the two questions are separate. From 6 April 2027 unused pension funds are included in the value of the estate for inheritance tax even though the money still passes under the scheme rules rather than the will. That means a pension can be reportable for tax without ever reaching the executor, so the value has to be accounted for even where a different person received the money directly.

How long does a private pension take to pay out after a death?

It varies. A straightforward case with a clear nomination and one obvious beneficiary can take a few weeks, but where trustees must gather information about dependants it commonly runs to several months. Contact every provider early, because nothing starts moving until they have been told about the death, and old workplace schemes are easy to overlook when you are trying to find them all.