If you have benefits with a previous employer’s ‘final salary’ pension scheme and you are not in the best of health, please take a little time to read this section, and a little more time to contact The Pensions Office.

Employees who are members of a final salary pension scheme accumulate benefits which increase every year. When the employee stops working for the employer his benefits aren’t lost; they are ‘preserved’ within the scheme but the level of benefits isn’t ‘frozen’; they increase in value each year until benefits start to be taken.

Almost all final salary schemes not only promise pension benefits to the scheme member; they also promise benefits to a surviving spouse (or, in some cases, a common law or same sex partner) or dependant child in the event of the scheme member’s death. When the scheme is asked to provide a transfer value it must take into account not only the value of the promise of member’s benefits but also the value of the promise of those death benefits.

But what if the scheme member isn’t married and doesn’t have a regular partner? The death benefits are likely to be mostly or totally unimportant to that person. The member might then be tempted to consider transferring to a personal pension to gain personal control of the fund and to benefit from all of the fund being used to provide personal benefits rather than some of the value being directed towards paying for death benefits.

So, if your relationship falls in to one of the following categories:

• common law partner; or
• same sex partner; or
• single; or
• a widow or widower; or
• divorced, or about to be divorced; or
• married, but dislike your spouse so much you want to deprive him or
  her of benefits from your pension scheme following your death!..........................