AFCA knocks back complainant's bid for share of murdered man's death benefit

The Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA) has upheld a superannuation trustee’s decision to distribute the death insurance benefit of a deceased member, who was murdered, to his children, dismissing a challenge from a woman who insisted she should receive half of the payout since she was his de facto spouse at the time of his death.

AFCA says the evidence provided by the woman is “very limited” and while it did point to a relationship between her and the deceased, it was not “sufficiently serious” to be a spousal relationship.

In one of the pieces of evidence provided, a non-binding declaration made in her favour by the deceased, AFCA says the nomination does not provide any detail of the circumstances in which it was made.

The woman says the deceased made it in her favour as he wanted her to be “looked after” and AFCA says while this may be true, it does not, in and of itself, show that any spousal relationship – if it ever existed – was still intact at the date of his death some five months later in April 2018.

“For clarity, because the deceased left dependants (being his children) the trustee could only take a non-binding nomination into account if the nominated beneficiary is also a dependant at the date of death,” AFCA says in its ruling of the dispute.

AFCA also gave little weight to the various statutory declarations about the relationship with the deceased, saying they are of “limited value” as insufficient details were provided to back her case she was in a “spousal” relationship with him.

And while her health care card listed the same address as the deceased, AFCA says the date on the card – September 9 2016 – appears to be a few days before the deceased became engaged with another woman.

AFCA points out also the “striking” absence of contemporaneous documentary evidence supporting the existence of a spousal relationship.

The ombudsman notes that the deceased’s two sisters and the detective who was investigating his death say they had not heard of the complainant before her death benefit claim application.

“It is unlikely the deceased was in a spousal relationship with the complainant at the same time he became engaged to another person,” AFCA said.

“The complainant was not the spouse of the deceased at the date of death.”

The complaint over the distribution of the death benefit arose after the trustee decided to distribute the benefit of $405,807.13 to his three minor children, who were represented by their mother, identified as Ms KW in the AFCA ruling.

Ms KW was previously married to the deceased but had divorced him in May 2016 prior to his death two years later in 2018.

Click here for more from the ruling.