Here is the thing most people get wrong, and it is not a small thing.
Your superannuation is not covered by your will.
It doesn't matter how carefully the will was drafted, or how recently. Super sits outside your estate. The fund decides where a death benefit goes, and the thing guiding that decision is a form held by the fund — not the document held by your solicitor.
For many Australians, super plus its attached insurance is the largest single sum they will ever pass on. It is also the one most likely to end up somewhere nobody intended.
What a nomination actually is
A death benefit nomination is a form you lodge with your super fund telling them who should receive the benefit. There are broadly three states it can be in:
Binding — the fund must follow it, provided it is valid and current.
Non-binding — the fund treats it as a preference and makes its own decision.
None — the fund decides, generally between your dependants and your estate, using its own process.
The three-year problem
This is the part that catches people who did everything right.
Binding nominations commonly lapse after three years unless they were made as non-lapsing. Many funds offer both, and plenty of people made a binding nomination once, years ago, and have assumed ever since that it is doing something.
A lapsed nomination is treated much like no nomination at all.
If you made one when you started a job in 2019 and haven't touched it, it is worth knowing which kind it was and what date it carries.
What changes it
A nomination made before a marriage, a divorce, a new child, or a separation may point somewhere you would no longer choose. Life moves; the form doesn't.
What to check, per fund
For each super fund you hold — including the old ones you'd forgotten, which is a separate exercise:
- Is there a nomination on file at all?
- Is it binding, non-binding, or lapsed?
- What date was it made?
- Is it lapsing or non-lapsing?
Log in to each fund and look. The date is the piece that matters most, and it is the piece nobody writes down.
What we won't tell you
Whether to make a nomination, what kind to make, or who to name.
We are being deliberate about this. Telling someone to make a binding nomination, or suggesting who should receive a death benefit, is the kind of thing that requires a financial services licence — and the stakes are real. Who receives super has tax consequences that differ depending on the relationship, and getting it wrong is expensive in a way that surfaces only after you are gone.
Your fund can explain your options. A licensed financial adviser can advise on them. What this folder does is make sure the question gets asked, and that your family knows which funds to ask it of.