Nomination in employees provident fund for unmarried male

Kapil Tiwari (Senior Export Executive)   (449 Points)

24 December 2012  

I am a member of the Employees Provident Fund and have been voluntarily contributing 100% of my basic salary (Rs.6,500/- per month) for the last several years and have been able to save a significant amount in my EPF account as part of my retirement planning.

I am not married and do not intend to get married or raise a family. Hence, I have nominated my younger sister to be the beneficiary of my EPF corpus in case of my death.

I have just come across 2 clauses in the EPF scheme which has me worried:

1)"If a member has a family at the time of making a nomination, the nomination shall be in favour of one or more persons belonging to his family. 
Any nomination made by such member in favour of a person not belonging to his family shall be invalid."

2)"a family” means— 
(i) in the case of a male member, his wife, his children, whether married or unmarried, his dependant parents and his deceased son’s 
widow and children."

My queries are:

a)whether, after reading these two clauses, my sister's appointment as my nominee is legal and valid since I have no "family" as defined in point 2 given above,

b)that the entire amount(corpus) in my EPF account will be handed over to my sister without any undue complications in the eventuality of my death,

c)can I also appoint my brother or nephew or cousin as my nominee as long as I am not married and do not have a "family" as defined in point 2 above?

Thanks and Best Regards/Kapil Tiwari