Needing legal Representative for spouse who passed away

Hi ,just wondering if anyone dealt with below pension plan after death of person who had this pension from previous employment,stating legal representative needed for dealing with this process.Part of RPA Railway Procurement Agency (Semi State). I received Life Insurance,Government's widower pension, bank funds without legal representative.

Just wondering is this the case ?

Section 30(3) of the Pensions Act, 1990 states as follows:

“On the death of a member of a scheme who is entitled to a preserved benefit before such benefit commences to be payable [a deferred Member] an amount shall be payable under the scheme to his personal representative in respect thereof equal to the accumulated value of the appropriate contributions under the scheme in respect of the member immediately before his death.”
Therefore, the Trustees have no discretion to pay the benefit to any individual other than a legal personal representative (LPR) with regard to a death in deferment. A Grant of Probate/Letters of Administration is required because the assets left behind by the deceased cannot be legally dealt with without this document. It is the Grant of Probate/Letters of Administration that determine the LPR of the member’s estate and provide them with the legal authority to acquire and hold the estate’s assets for orderly distribution.
The law requires a person to be responsible for the affairs of the deceased and for someone to be responsible for the obligations of the deceased’s estate such as taxes, debts and inheritance due to beneficiaries. The law also needs to provide a system to safeguard the deceased and ensure that the Will is proved to be the last one and that all legal requirements have been followed. Please note that a Will designating someone as an Executor/Executrix is insufficient. An Executor/Executrix has first priority to extract the grant and be designated as the LPR by the Probate Office, but they are not automatically the LPR.

In extraordinary cases, where the benefit amount is very small or the deceased has no assets, the funds may be distributed through the Small Estates Procedure. This procedure allows estates of under €30,000 to be administered without the need for a grant of probate/grant of administration.

To be clear, you don't need a "legal representative" in the sense of a lawyer. You need a legal personal representative — an executor or administrator of the estate, who has obtained a grant of representation from the Probate Office.

Do you really need one? You do if the administrators of the pension scheme decide that you do. They could pay out to a widow/widower without a grant of representation if they chose to, but they would be running a risk — the risk that an executor/administrator would turn up later and demand the money. And it's a risk they have evidently decided not to run. You can't force them to run it.

How much are we talking about here? What is the accumulated value of the pension entitlement?

IANAL but it does seem to say that if you have the grant of probate and are declared the LPR on the grant of probate then they will deal with you. So can you wait until after probate is granted? Can you ask the probate office for their advice?

Clamball said:

IANAL but it does seem to say that if you have the grant of probate and are declared the LPR on the grant of probate then they will deal with you. So can you wait until after probate is granted?

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I think the OP's problem is that they are being told they have to wait until after probate is granted.

I suspect they would prefer to deal with the estate without getting a grant of probate at all, if they can. They've been able to deal with other issues without getting a grant of probate, and they were hoping they could deal with this one too.

Is the sum involved less than €30,000? I think that is the deciding factor regarding needing probate.
If you were able to receive the bank funds, I'm assuming the sum was below a similar threshold (or was a joint account).
I (executor) was able to access funds from my Dad's bank account after he passed, because the balance was low enough. But I still need to apply for probate because of other assets.

Although a "small estates procdure", allowing estates of under €25,000 (not €30,000) to be administered without a grant of representation, is mentioned on the Probate Office website, I don't think there's any law to back this up.

As I understand it, this is a reference to the willingness in practice of most financial institutions to release relatively modest amounts of money, in straightforward cases, without insisting on the production of a grant. If their customer has died, and you are the customer's widow/er, the bank reckons you're probably the person who's ultimately entitled to the money in the account, and you're almost certainly the person entitled to take out a grant of representation. So if they pay the money out to you now, the chances that someone else will turn up later with a grant of representation, demanding the money, are pretty low. So they get you to sign a form called an "indemnity" agreeing that if somebody else turns up later with a better claim to the money than you have, you will make sure the bank is not at a loss (i.e. you will pay that person whatever they are entitled to so the bank doesn't have to). You sign the form because you are confident that nobody with a better claim than you will turn up. The bank pays you the money.

Each financial institution decides for itself how much it is willing to pay out in reliance on an indemnity of this kind. The Probate Office website mentions €25,000, presumably on the basis of some knowledge of what position the financial institutions commonly take. But all that matters to you is the position taken by the financial institution that actually has the money in your case. They are not under any obligation to pay out any amount at all, and if they are willing to pay out a modest amount their limit may be either more or less than €25,000.

The bank's attitude will also be coloured by the facts of the case. If you're the deceased's spouse of 40 years, and you produce a will naming your as executor and leaving you the entire estate, the bank will be reasonably comfortable that nobody with a better claim is likely to emerge. But if there is no will and you are the deceased's second cousin once removed and claim to be his nearest relative and entitled to his estate on that basis, the bank will be less confident.

In this case we're not dealing with a bank but with the trustees of a pension scheme/the issuer of a PRSA/the issuer of an ARF, but the same considerations broadly apply. If they are comfortable to pay out a modest amount without a grant, and your claim is less than that amount, great. If that is not the case, there isn't a great deal you can do to change their mind.

POC said:

Is the sum involved less than €30,000? I think that is the deciding factor regarding needing probate.

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Isn't it €25K?
Edit: post crossed with @TomEdison's.