What happens to my KiwiSaver when I die?

You cannot leave it to anyone

Most people assume KiwiSaver works like life insurance, where you name someone and they receive it. It does not, and the Act gives it no room to.

Clause 9 of Schedule 1 to the KiwiSaver Act 2006 is four lines long:

If a member dies, the manager must, on application by the member's personal representative, pay to that person an amount that is equal to the value of the member's accumulation at the date on which the application is accepted as part of the member's estate.

Three things follow from those words. The money is paid to your personal representative, meaning your executor or administrator. It is paid as part of your estate. And there is no mention of a nomination, because there is no such thing in KiwiSaver.

Some providers offer a form that asks who you would like the money to go to. Whatever that form is doing, it is not overriding clause 9.

Which is not how the neighbours do it

This is one of the places where three broadly similar systems diverge sharply.

KiwiSaver

• Your will
• Or the intestacy rules

No nomination is possible. The money goes to your estate and the estate decides.

Australian super

• Your binding nomination
• Or the fund's trustee

You can bind the trustee, or leave them a discretion they will exercise themselves.

401(k) and IRA

• Your named beneficiary

Named on the account, and it does not pass through the estate at all.

An Australian super fund can be told what to do with a binding nomination, and if it is not told, its trustee decides. A 401(k) or IRA passes to whoever is named on the account. Only in New Zealand does the money have to travel through your estate to get anywhere.

For someone with savings in more than one of these countries, that is the practical point. The same intention needs to be recorded in three different ways, and doing it properly in one country does nothing for the others.

So your will is doing the work

Because the balance lands in your estate, it is distributed by whatever your will says. Not by who you told your provider about. Not by who you live with. By the will.

And if there is no will, by Part 3 of the Administration Act 1969, which sets out a table of who takes what. The shares surprise people who assumed a partner takes everything.

Where you leave a husband, wife, civil union partner or surviving de facto partner and children, the Act gives the partner the personal chattels, then charges the residue with a prescribed amount, currently $155,000, and then splits what is left: "a third for the husband, wife, civil union partner, or surviving de facto partner absolutely" and "two-thirds on the statutory trusts for the issue of the intestate".

So on an intestacy with children, after the first $155,000, two dollars in every three go to the children rather than to the surviving partner. For a household whose largest asset outside the house is a KiwiSaver balance, that is not a small detail.

Where there are no children and no surviving parents, the partner takes the chattels, the prescribed amount, and then everything that remains.

The shortcut for smaller balances

Probate takes time, and for years the sting was that a modest KiwiSaver balance could not be released until it was granted. That threshold moved recently and by a lot.

Clause 9(b) allows the manager to pay without a personal representative "if the requirements of section 65 of the Administration Act 1969 are met". Section 65 lets a superannuation fund pay out a sum "not exceeding the prescribed amount" without administration of the estate having been obtained, on satisfactory evidence of the death.

The prescribed amount for section 65 became $40,000 on 24 September 2025. Before that it was $15,000.

The people who can be paid under section 65 are listed: the widow, widower, surviving civil union partner or children of the deceased, a surviving de facto partner, the persons beneficially entitled to the estate, anyone who appears entitled to obtain administration, a relative who undertakes to maintain the deceased's children who are minors, or whoever is providing those children's day-to-day care. It is a payment made without probate, not a payment made outside the estate, and the Act still governs who is entitled to it.

Note what this does not change. It changes how quickly the money is released, not who is entitled to it.

Two things this does not touch

Life insurance held inside a KiwiSaver scheme. Some schemes attach cover. Insurance proceeds follow the policy's own rules and are a different question from the accumulation clause 9 deals with.

Tax. New Zealand has no estate duty and no inheritance tax. But the balance is valued at the date the application is accepted rather than the date of death, which means market movements between those two dates belong to the estate.

What this guide does not tell you

It does not tell you how to make a will, or how the Property (Relationships) Act 1976 or the Family Protection Act 1955 might change the destination of an estate after the fact. Both can, and both sit outside this page.

It does not cover what happens to a KiwiSaver balance when the member dies while living overseas, where an estate may need administering in more than one country.

It does not deal with what a surviving partner receives from the government, which is a separate question with separate rules.

And it does not tell you what your own will should say, which is work for someone who takes responsibility for the document.