The Pension Fund Adjudicator acknowledged life partnerships during a dispute over the partner receiving a portion of a deceased's pension assets.
A pension beneficiary nomination does not override the trustee’s duties to distribute the benefits fairly, and life partners may qualify as legal dependents, even when they do not continuously live together.
This was the finding of the Pension Funds Adjudicator, Lebogang Mogashoa, in a death benefit dispute between the sister of the deceased and his life partner.
The dispute followed the death of a member of Corporate Selection Umbrella Retirement Fund, who left behind a death benefit of more than R8.3 million. What followed was a bitter contest between his sister and a woman only identified as M, described by the fund as his “life partner”. This case raises profound questions about dependency, fairness, and the evolving legal recognition of life partnerships in South African pension law, Mogashoa said.
The complainants - the deceased’s sister, along with her two children - opposed the fund’s decision to classify M as the deceased’s permanent life partner. Of the more than R8.3 million benefit, the board allocated 45% each to the sister and the life partner, and 5% each to the niece and nephew.
