Binding Death Benefit Nominations

BDBNs are legal documents

Topdocs provides standard and complex BDBNs with legal oversight provided by Topdocs Legal Pty Ltd. As BDBNs are legal documents often with high dollar value, preparation by a non legal professional carries significant risk. Topdocs removes this risk by having Topdocs Legal Pty Ltd lawyers sign off on each BDBN confirming that it has been completed, signed and witnessed in accordance with legal requirements.

What is a BDBN?

A BDBN is a notice given by a super fund member to the trustee of their super fund requiring a death benefit to be paid to the member’s nominated dependant(s) and/or legal personal representative. Without a valid BDBN in place, the super fund trustee will, for better or worse, determine which one or more of the member’s dependants and/or legal personal representative receive the death benefit.

Standard and Complex BDBNs

Topdocs provides both Standard and Complex BDBNs. Their features are as follows:

Standard BDBN

• Two levels of Beneficiary – Primary Beneficiaries and Secondary Surviving Beneficiaries where a Primary Beneficiary pre-deceases the Member
• The ability to pay the benefits by way of Lump Sums or Pensions
• The BDBN does not lapse merely by the passage of time (non-lapsing)
• The ability to pay part or all to the Legal Personal Representative (Estate of the member)

Complex BDBN

• Three levels of Beneficiary - Primary Beneficiaries and Secondary Surviving Beneficiaries where a Primary Beneficiary pre-deceases the member, as well as Final Surviving Beneficiaries where the secondary beneficiary pre-deceases the member
• The ability to nominate specific individual assets to members
• The ability to cater for conditional BDBNs
• The ability to pay the benefits by way of Lump Sums or Pensions
• The BDBN does not lapse merely by the passage of time (non-lapsing)
• The ability to pay part or all to the Legal Personal Representative (Estate of the member)

BDBN Beneficiaries

A deceased member’s death benefits can generally only be paid to one or more of their dependants and/or their legal personal representative. Hence, the only people who can be nominated in a BDBN are one or more of their dependants and/or their legal personal representative.

A person’s dependants include their spouse, any child, any person with whom they have an interdependency relationship and any person who is financially dependent on them. Spouse includes same-sex de facto spouse and child includes adopted child, stepchild, ex-nuptial child and child of the person’s spouse. Two persons have an interdependency relationship if they have a close personal relationship and either:

• they live together and one or each of them provides the other with financial and domestic support and personal care; or
• they do not satisfy the other requirements of an interdependency relationship because either or both of them suffer from a physical, intellectual or psychiatric disability or they are temporarily living apart, eg because one of them is temporarily living overseas.

A deceased person’s legal personal representative means the executor of their will or administrator of their estate.