You've made a will. You've decided who gets the house, who gets the savings, who gets the things that carry meaning. So your pension follows the same instructions. Right?

For most people in the UK, no.

Your pension is very probably the largest thing you will leave behind, and it usually sits completely outside your will. It is governed by a different document, decided by different people, and taxed under different rules. Most people never think about it until it is too late to change.

Here is how it actually works, and why one short form deserves an hour of your attention this week.

Your pension doesn't pass under your will

Most UK defined contribution (DC) pensions, meaning SIPPs (Self-Invested Personal Pensions), personal pensions and modern workplace pensions, are held under a trust. When you pass away, the money doesn't automatically belong to your estate. Instead, the scheme trustees or provider decide who receives it.

They make that decision at their discretion. They are guided by a form you complete called an expression of wish (also called a nomination of beneficiaries, or simply the nomination form). It tells them who you would like the money to go to.

Because that payment is discretionary, and not a fixed entitlement written into your will, the pension has historically sat outside your estate for Inheritance Tax (IHT). That is exactly why it is handled separately from everything else you own. It is a feature, not an oversight.

So the will covers the house and the savings. The expression of wish covers the pension. Two documents, two systems.

Why the expression of wish matters so much

The trustees look at your expression of wish first. If it is clear and current, they will almost always follow it. If it is stale, wrong, or was never completed, the money can end up somewhere you would never have chosen.

Consider the common ways it goes wrong:

• It still names an ex-spouse from a marriage that ended years ago.
• It names someone who has since passed away, with no back-up named.
• It was completed when you joined a job in your twenties and never touched again.
• It was never completed at all, so the trustees are left to work out your family situation with no steer from you.

None of these are exotic. They are ordinary life, and they happen quietly in the background while the form gathers dust.

The single most valuable thing in this whole article is this: find your expression of wish for every pension you hold, and check it is current. Review it after any of these:

• Marriage or a new partner.
• Divorce or separation.
• A new child or grandchild.
• A death in the family.

It usually takes minutes. It is one of the highest-leverage hours in your whole financial life.

Guidance, not a binding instruction

One important nuance. Your expression of wish is influential, but it is not absolutely binding in the way a will is. The trustees retain discretion, and that discretion is precisely what has kept the pension outside your estate.

In practice, trustees usually follow a valid, up-to-date form. But they can take account of your wider circumstances, for example a dependant you did not name. So keep the form current and clear, and don't assume the trustees will read your mind if it isn't.

The tax your beneficiaries pay hinges on one number: age 75

Here is the part that surprises people most. How your pension is taxed when it passes on depends largely on how old you are when you pass away. The dividing line is your 75th birthday.

Before 75, a DC pension can generally pass to your beneficiaries tax-free, whether they take it as a lump sum or as income through beneficiary drawdown. Lump sums are tested against the Lump Sum and Death Benefit Allowance (LSDBA), currently £1,073,100, and normally need to be paid within two years.

On or after 75, whatever your beneficiaries withdraw is taxed as their own income, at their marginal rate, whether they take it as a lump sum or draw it gradually. (Income tax rates differ in Scotland.) A large lump sum taken in a single tax year can push a beneficiary into a higher band, so how and when they draw it matters a great deal.

Consider Gareth, 76, with a £300,000 SIPP he wants to leave to his adult daughter, Frances, who already earns a higher-rate salary. If Frances took the whole pot as one lump sum, it would land on top of her income in a single year and much of it could be taxed at 40% or above. If she instead kept it in beneficiary drawdown and took it gradually across several years, the tax bill could look very different. This is precisely the kind of interaction the UK version of Optiml is being designed to model: what a beneficiary actually keeps after tax, depending on your age and the timing of what they draw.

Nomination unlocks options, not just recipients

Naming a beneficiary does more than decide who gets the money. It decides what they are allowed to do with it.

A nominated beneficiary can usually keep the pension invested and draw from it flexibly, through what is called beneficiary or nominee drawdown. They can leave it in the tax-advantaged pension wrapper, let it keep growing, and even pass it on again to their own successors when the time comes.

Someone who is not a dependant and was never nominated often has far fewer options. In many schemes they can only receive the money where there is no surviving dependant or nominated beneficiary, and frequently only as a lump sum rather than as ongoing drawdown.

So completing the nomination form is not just a label saying who inherits. It is what unlocks the ability for the people you care about to keep the pension in its wrapper and manage it on their own terms. That is a genuinely under-appreciated point, and it is free to get right.

What changes on 6 April 2027

From 6 April 2027, most unused DC pension pots are expected to be counted as part of your estate for Inheritance Tax, at the standard 40% rate, where they currently sit outside it. The government estimates around 10,500 additional estates will be affected in the first year.

This doesn't change who your pension goes to. Your expression of wish still drives that. What it changes is how much of the pension may be exposed to IHT before it reaches them, and it interacts with the age-75 income-tax rule for your beneficiaries.

We've written separately, in full, about the April 2027 change and how to plan around it, so this isn't the place to repeat all of it. The point here is narrower: this change makes reviewing your nomination, and looking at your whole estate together, more important than it has ever been. A form you have not opened in a decade is now doing more work than it used to.

The precise interaction between the new IHT position and the beneficiary income-tax rules has been the subject of consultation, so be wary of anyone quoting you a single, tidy combined percentage. What is clear and settled is the direction: from that date, the pension counts towards IHT, and that raises the stakes on getting your nomination and your estate structure right.

The honest takeaway

Most of this comes down to one action almost anyone can take this week: find the expression of wish form for each pension you hold, and check it still says what you would want it to say.

Bigger estates, family trusts, and blended families can be genuinely complex, and the April 2027 change adds a moving part. Those situations can be worth proper professional advice. But the basic hygiene, a current nomination form, costs nothing and protects everyone you would want to protect.

Seeing the full picture is harder. What would your beneficiaries actually receive after the age-75 treatment and the April 2027 IHT position? How does the pension fit alongside your ISAs, your other savings, and the rest of your estate? Modelling that clearly, on your own numbers, is exactly what the UK version of Optiml is being built to do through its estate and legacy modelling. Optiml is coming to the UK, and the waitlist is how you'll be first to use it.

Your will decides who gets your house. A different form decides who gets your pension.

Go and check which name is on it.