Written For The Australian - Super death benefit rules mean singles can’t choose a beneficiary
by James GerrardThu Oct 23 2025
Here's a question worth asking: why can a married person leave their super to whoever their spouse happens to be, no questions asked, but a single person can't nominate their own sibling, niece or best friend to receive theirs?
Welcome to the strange world of superannuation death benefit nominations, where the law hasn't caught up with the reality of modern Australian households.
Under current rules, a binding death benefit nomination can only direct your super to a very narrow class of people: a spouse, de facto, a child of any age, someone financially dependent on you, or someone in an "interdependency relationship" with you. That last category sounds inclusive but in practice is tightly interpreted — usually requiring you to be living with the person.
Meanwhile, ABS data shows the proportion of Australians over 15 who have never married jumped from 31.6 per cent in 2001 to 36.5 per cent in 2021. Singles are a growing cohort, and yet the law hasn't budged.
One Sydneysider I spoke to, Nicole Murray, put it bluntly — she called the current framework "ludicrous" and "insulting", pointing out she can get a driver's licence with less hassle than legitimising her own sibling as a super beneficiary.
The workaround — a non-binding nomination — is no workaround at all. I looked at a recent case where a father wanted 80 per cent of his super to go to his son and 20 per cent to his sister. Because his sister didn't qualify as a dependant, only a non-binding nomination was possible. An elderly uncle then swooped in with a claim, and the matter remains unresolved.
Yes, you can push super through your will via the estate, but that exposes it to family provision challenges — the very thing binding nominations were designed to avoid.
My view: the rules need a serious rethink. A single person should be able to nominate a niece, nephew, sibling or parent with the same certainty a married person nominates a spouse. Anything less is discrimination by relationship status.