Superannuation is held on trust for its members. Upon the death of a member it is the trustee that decides where the member's benefits are paid. This is subject to the law under the SIS Act which stipulates that a death benefit can only be paid to a member's dependents or to the legal personal representative (which would be the executor if there is a will or the Adminstrator if there is no will).
The trustee must follow the trust deed on this. Most would be broad and say 'dependents'. This leaves a problem because there may be children and there may be a spouse. the children could be from a previous relationship. So in many cases either the spouse gets it and the children miss out or vice versa.
A trustee cannot delegate their decisions - trust law. An exception is if the deed allows it. In these situations where a deed allows it the member can bind the trustee to force them to give the member's death benefits to one or more beneficiaries. Many of the industry or retail funds don't allow this or may allow a lapsing nomination which must be renewed every 3 years.
So it is a good idea to check with your fund trustee to see if you can make a binding nomination.
Even if you can you must make sure that the binding nomination (or BDBN binding death benefit nomination) is actually binding. It must be witnessed by 2 independant witnesses, dated and served on the trustee. (at a trade fair once I met a lawyer who had set up a firm specialising in super. She told me they used to go to people's homes to sign them up etc and do BDBNs. I asked her how did she get 2 witnesses and she said 'what!'. Later in the day I walked back past her stand and she said she looked up the SIS Act and Regs and did not realise they needed 2 witnesses - they had done over 200 of these for existing clients and all were invalid.
The beneficiaries must also be clearly named. There is a recent case from a few weeks ago where a dead lawyer's BDBN was invalid because he nominated the trustee of his estate and not the legal personal representative. His super therefore tell into the wrong hands - or someone other than he intended.
Who should you nominate? I think it is a good idea, in many cases but not all, to nominate the LPR so it goes into your estate and can then be controlled by the will. if you do this then consider having a separate trust in the will to segregate the super so that it can go to the dependents who will have tax concessions.
The downside of it going into the estate is that wills can be invalid or contested. The super may then pass via the intestacy laws or under a court order to someone else. However this can be the case even if the super doesn't go into the estate, especially where there is a connection to NSW.
Any comments in a will are irrelevant to the trustee of a superfund as the trustee cannot take directions from a will.