A gift to someone who dies before you generally lapses and falls into the residue of your estate. Superannuation works differently — a nomination is not binding to the extent it names someone who cannot receive a benefit, so trustee discretion may apply instead. Jointly held property has already passed by survivorship, outside the will entirely.
Most estate plans are built on an assumption nobody says out loud: that the people named in them will outlive the person who named them.
For a will drafted in your fifties, that assumption has often quietly failed by the time it matters. Wills written at that age name siblings, old friends, a spouse's brother, a favourite niece. Twenty years on, some of those people are gone — and the document has not been opened since the day it was signed.
This article is about what actually happens when someone named in your plan dies first. The short answer is that it depends on which document names them, because wills, superannuation and jointly held assets fail in three completely different ways — and none of them tells the others.
This is general information, not personal financial advice, and it is not legal advice. Wills and succession are governed by state and territory law and the rules genuinely differ — as ASIC's MoneySmart puts it, "each state and territory has different rules" (https://moneysmart.gov.au/plan-for-your-retirement/wills-and-powers-of-attorney) — so the specifics belong with a solicitor in your own state.
What happens to a gift in your will
If you leave something to a person who dies before you do, that gift generally lapses — it fails — and the money or asset falls into the residue of your estate. The residue is everything left after the specific gifts, debts and expenses are dealt with, and it goes to whoever your will names as the residuary beneficiary.
So a lapsed gift does not disappear. It just goes somewhere other than where you intended, and usually somewhere you did not consciously choose for it.
Most states and territories have anti-lapse provisions that can preserve certain gifts — typically where the beneficiary who died leaves children of their own, in which case the gift may pass to them instead. But the scope of those provisions varies between jurisdictions, and they do not catch everything. They are worth knowing about; they are not something to rely on. If you want your late brother's share to go to his children, the way to make that certain is to say so in the will rather than hope the legislation does it for you.
The residuary trap
This is the one worth understanding properly, because it is where a lapse does real damage.
If your residuary beneficiary is the one who dies first, and your will does not name a substitute, there may be nobody to receive whatever falls into residue. When that happens, that part of your estate can be distributed under the statutory intestacy formula — the same set of rules that applies when somebody dies without a will at all.
The result is an estate that is part testate and part intestate at the same time: the specific gifts you wrote are honoured, and the rest is distributed by a formula you never saw and may well not have agreed with. Our article on intestacy covers what that formula does and why it so rarely matches what people actually want.
Almost nobody plans for this. A reasonable number of people create it, simply by naming one person as residuary beneficiary and never revisiting the document.
Superannuation fails on a completely different mechanism
Here is the thing that catches people who have carefully updated their will: your super is not governed by your will and does not automatically follow it.
Super is held by a trustee and paid under superannuation law, and who can receive it is restricted. MoneySmart lists the people a fund is allowed to pay as your current spouse or partner, your children of any age, and someone who is financially dependent on you (https://moneysmart.gov.au/how-super-works/who-gets-your-super-if-you-die, as at August 2026). The underlying rule is federal: the ATO explains that Regulation 6.22 of the SIS Regulations "restricts, subject to limited exceptions, the recipients of death benefits to the dependants and personal legal representative of the deceased member" (https://www.ato.gov.au/tax-and-super-professionals/for-superannuation-professionals/apra-regulated-funds/paying-benefits/paying-superannuation-death-benefits, as at August 2026). "Legal personal representative" means your estate — which is the bridge back to your will, if you build it deliberately.
So what happens when a person you nominated has died?
The ATO states the principle directly: a death benefit nomination "is not binding on the trustee to the extent that it nominates a person who cannot receive a benefit in accordance with the operating standards." A person who has died is not among the people who can receive one.
Whether that means the nomination fails only as to that person's share, or fails altogether, depends on your fund's rules and how the nomination was drafted. Some nominations are structured so the remaining shares still stand; others fall over entirely. This is a question for your fund, not one to assume the answer to — and it is worth asking in writing.
Death is not the only way this happens, which is worth knowing because the other route is even quieter. The ATO gives the example of a spouse who ceases to be a dependant after the nomination was made: paying them would then contravene the operating standards, so the nomination stops binding the trustee. Nobody dies, nothing is torn up, and the document simply stops working.
Where a nomination fails, the trustee decides — and MoneySmart is blunt about what that means: your fund "may decide who gets your money," and "this might not match what you would have decided." Our article on what happens when there is no valid nomination covers how that discretion is actually exercised.
Two related points worth checking at the same time. A lapsing binding nomination needs renewing every three years or it expires, while a non-lapsing one does not (MoneySmart) — a separate failure mode with its own trap, covered in our article on the three-year expiry. And a non-binding nomination was only ever an instruction that guides the fund rather than one it must follow.
Reversionary pensions simply do not revert
If you have an account-based pension with a reversionary beneficiary — usually a spouse — the arrangement is that on your death the pension continues to them automatically, without the balance being cashed out.
If that person dies before you, there is nothing to revert to. The balance becomes a death benefit, dealt with under whatever nomination is in place or by trustee discretion. That is a materially different outcome from the smooth continuation you set up, and it can have quite different tax and Centrelink consequences.
Our article comparing reversionary nominations and binding nominations covers how the two interact and which one takes priority.
Jointly held assets have already changed hands
If you own property as joint tenants and the other owner dies, the property passes to you by survivorship — automatically, outside the will, regardless of what either will says.
Two consequences follow, and the second is the one people miss. Any intention the deceased had for their share to go elsewhere is defeated; survivorship wins. And you now own the whole thing outright — an asset your own will may never have contemplated you holding alone. A will drafted when you owned half a house is dealing with quite a different estate now. Our article on joint tenancy versus tenants in common explains the structures; the point here is simply that the survivor's estate plan has already changed before anyone reads a document.
Nothing tells anything else
That is the real problem, and it is worth stating plainly.
Your will, your super nomination, your reversionary election and your property title are four separate systems. They fail in different ways, they fail at different times, and not one of them notifies any of the others. Updating your will does nothing to your binding nomination. Renewing your binding nomination does nothing to your reversionary election. And survivorship on a jointly held property has already happened without anyone signing anything.
The same is true of the roles as well as the gifts: an executor who dies before you leaves your will without one, and an attorney who dies before you leaves you without an attorney — the same structural failure in yet another document. Our article on revoking a power of attorney covers why those appointments need their own review.
Worked examples
Two versions of the same event. Illustrative only, and not legal advice; outcomes depend on your will's drafting, your fund's rules and your state's law. No dollar figures appear here because nothing in this turns on an amount — it turns on which document names the person who died.
Consider Margaret, 76, widowed, whose will was drafted in 2004. It leaves specific gifts to two grandchildren and everything else — the residue — to her younger sister. Her sister died last year. Margaret has not looked at the will since signing it. The specific gifts to the grandchildren still stand, but the residue, which is most of the estate, now has no named recipient, so that part of her estate can fall to the statutory intestacy formula. Anti-lapse provisions might preserve it for her sister's children in some jurisdictions, but scope varies and it is not something to count on. On these facts, seeing a solicitor to name a substitute residuary beneficiary is generally rational, and it is a smaller job than it sounds — the fix is a clause, not a new will.
Now consider Frank, 71, who did update his will after his eldest daughter died, and reasonably assumes he is now in order. Two things sit outside that document. His binding nomination still names three children including the one who has died — and whether it now fails only as to her third or fails altogether depends on his fund's rules and how it was drafted, which is a question for the fund in writing rather than one to assume (ATO). Separately, his account-based pension carries a reversionary nomination in favour of his late wife, so there is nothing left to revert to and the balance would become a death benefit. On these facts, checking the nomination and the reversionary election as two separate documents in a separate system is generally rational: updating the will did nothing to either of them, and neither will tell him it has stopped working.
The rule worth remembering
A death in the family is an estate-planning event for the survivors, not just for the person who died.
Everyone attends to the deceased person's estate — probate, distribution, tax returns, the house. Almost nobody attends to the documents of everyone else who was named in the same web of appointments, at precisely the moment those documents have been invalidated or reshaped.
So when someone close to you dies, add one item to the list: pull out your own will, your own nominations, and your own appointments, and see whose name is in them.
What to actually do
Name substitutes, expressly — "to my brother, and if he does not survive me, to his children in equal shares." Six extra words remove most of the above. Do it for every meaningful gift, and above all for the residuary gift, which is where the most damage happens and which is the clause people think about least.
Then check your super nomination separately, because it is a different document in a different system: ask your fund, in writing, what happens to your nomination if one nominated person predeceases you, and keep the answer on file. Check your reversionary election separately again. Three documents, three checks, and none of them covers the others.
Finally, treat any death among your named people as a trigger. Beneficiaries, executors, attorneys, guardians — if a name in your documents has died, the documents need looking at. Our annual review checklist is a reasonable place to keep this anchored so it does not depend on remembering.
The one-line version
A gift to someone who has died generally lapses into residue, a super nomination naming them may fail to the trustee's discretion instead, and a jointly held asset has already passed by survivorship — three systems, three failures, no notifications. Name substitutes, and review your own documents whenever someone in them dies.
Sources
- ASIC MoneySmart — Who gets your super if you die
- ATO — Paying superannuation death benefits
- ATO — Superannuation death benefits
- ASIC MoneySmart — Wills and powers of attorney
Key takeaways
- A will gift to someone who dies first generally lapses into residue — anti-lapse provisions may help, but they vary by state and are not something to rely on.
- If the residuary beneficiary predeceases you and no substitute is named, part of your estate can be distributed under the intestacy formula, leaving it part testate and part intestate.
- Superannuation does not follow your will — a nomination is not binding to the extent it names someone who cannot receive a benefit, and whether it fails in part or in full depends on your fund.
- A reversionary pension does not revert if the reversionary beneficiary dies first; the balance becomes a death benefit under nomination or trustee discretion.
- A death in the family is an estate-planning event for the survivors, not just for the person who died — pull out your own documents and see whose name is in them.
Frequently asked questions
What happens to a gift in my will if the beneficiary dies before me?
It generally lapses and falls into the residue of your estate, going to your residuary beneficiary instead. Most states and territories have anti-lapse provisions that can preserve some gifts — typically where the deceased beneficiary left children — but their scope varies and they do not catch everything. Naming a substitute in the will is the only reliable way to control where it goes.
What if my residuary beneficiary dies before me?
That is the more serious case. If no substitute is named, there may be nobody to receive whatever falls into residue, and that part of your estate can be distributed under the statutory intestacy formula — the same rules that apply when someone dies without a will. The estate ends up part testate and part intestate at the same time.
Does my will control who gets my super if my nominated beneficiary has died?
No. Superannuation is not governed by your will and does not automatically follow it. A death benefit nomination is not binding on the trustee to the extent it nominates a person who cannot receive a benefit, and a person who has died is not an eligible recipient. Depending on your fund rules and how the nomination was drafted, it may fail as to that share or fail entirely, with the trustee then deciding.
What happens to a reversionary pension if the reversionary beneficiary dies first?
There is nothing to revert to, so the pension does not continue automatically as planned. The balance becomes a death benefit dealt with under whatever nomination is in place or by trustee discretion, which can have quite different tax and Centrelink consequences from the seamless continuation that was intended.
Do I need to review my own will when someone else dies?
Yes, if they were named in it. Beneficiaries, executors, attorneys and guardians all need checking, because a death invalidates or reshapes those appointments and nothing notifies you. Your will, your super nomination, your reversionary election and your property title are four separate systems, and none of them tells the others.