What happens to your KiwiSaver money if you die?<\/p>\n
Australians might be being warned to make sure they’ve organised who will get their superannuation savings when they die – but New Zealanders don’t have as much to worry about.<\/p>\n
ABC reported this week that 15.5 million Australians might not have made a binding death nomination for their superannuation accounts, to direct their fund on who to pay the money to.<\/p>\n
In Australia, superannuation does not automatically become part of a person’s estate if they die.<\/p>\n
In New Zealand, the situation was quite different – and simpler.<\/p>\n
KiwiSaver formed part of a person’s estate when they died and became another asset that was dealt with by their will if they had one.<\/p>\n
“New Zealanders don’t generally need the equivalent of Australia’s binding death benefit nomination to make sure their KiwiSaver follows their estate wishes,” Pie Funds chief executive Ana-Marie Lockyer said.<\/p>\n
“There are still good reasons to have an up-to-date will and make things easy for your executor, but there isn’t the same additional layer of superannuation estate planning that Australians face.”<\/p>\n
If they did not have a will, there were rules that determined how the estate was distributed.<\/p>\n
If they had a spouse or partner and children, the spouse or partner would get all personal possessions, $155,000 and a third of anything remaining. The other two-thirds would be divided among the children.<\/p>\n
Kernel founder Dean Anderson said the main thing for New Zealanders to be aware of was that the limit at which probate was required had increased.<\/p>\n
It was now the case that most estates under $40,000 could be handled without the need to apply to the court.<\/p>\n
It was increased from $15,000 because many KiwiSaver balances had grown past that level.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What happens to your KiwiSaver money if you die? Australians might be being warned to make sure they’ve…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":517122,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[114,268,85,46,266,267],"class_list":["post-581893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-business","tag-finance","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=581893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581893\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/517122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=581893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=581893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=581893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}