If you died today, who would receive your pension benefits? Who have you nominated as your beneficiary? In many cases, the majority of beneficiaries are the people you nominated when you first got your job as a young person.
These could be your parents or even your siblings. But as Nyawira Kirubi, the Senior Manager – Head of Legal at the MTC Trust & Corporate Services, explains, this can turn out to be a huge problem if you are married with kids and have never changed your nominees’ financial document to include them. Ms Nyawira explained this in a write up as follows:
When you first joined your company, you signed a pension nomination form. It was just another document in the onboarding process, easily completed and quickly forgotten. At that time, life was simple—no spouse, no children—just your parents, the people who had always been your safety net. Naturally, you listed them as your beneficiaries.
Then life happened. Years passed. You loved. You lost. You built. You changed. Life evolved, but that form did not. And then, one day, life made the decision for you.
Now, your wife—still in shock—sits across from us, the trustees, her hand clenched tightly around your child’s. Your parents are there too, silent, heavy with grief. Everyone grieving you, but also beginning to feel the edges of something sharper.
Because the pension benefits—the ones meant to cushion the blow of your absence—are legally earmarked for the people you named in that moment when life was still so young: Your parents – Not your partner; Not your children; Not the family you actually built.
The law gives trustees discretion. And that’s important. It gives us a window—a necessary, human space to interpret, to weigh, to consider what is right, not just what is written down.
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But discretion isn’t a promise. And even when it’s used wisely, it can’t always undo what silence has cemented. Because sometimes, even the best intentions can’t undo what was never updated.
This oversight doesn’t just send money the wrong way. It sends a message. It rewrites a person’s story in a way they never meant. It divides people who are already grieving. It can set off disputes that drag on for years, fracturing what little remains of peace.
That’s why, in this space, expertise is not just about knowing the rules. It’s about understanding the consequences.
As someone who has sat with trustees through these heart-wrenching conversations, I need you to know this: the nomination form is not just a form. It’s a voice from the past trying to make decisions for the future. And unless you update it, it will say things you no longer mean. It will hurt people you meant to protect. It will pit love against law.
The worst part? You won’t be there to explain it. So please—if there’s anything you take from this: go change your nomination papers.
