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Life Insurance Beneficiary Designations
Learn beneficiary distinctions.
Help yourself protect your family.
Credit: Ted Bongiovanni
Life insurance beneficiary designation can either be revocable or irrevocable.
A revocable beneficiary can be changed by the owner of the policy without the signature of the beneficiary.
An irrevocable beneficiary gives the beneficiary extra ordinary powers, so that policy changes can only be made with the signatures of the owner of the policy and the beneficiary.
This is a very important distinction and because of this, irrevocable beneficiaries are often included as part of a divorce settlement. Policy changes, such as decreases in coverage or accessing any cash surrender value, require the signature of the irrevocable beneficiary on the policy.
Beneficiaries, whether revocable or irrevocable, can also be divided into either primary beneficiaries or contingent beneficiaries. Primary beneficiaries are the person, who would receive the proceeds, if the insured were to die. The contingent beneficiary takes effect if the insured and the beneficiary were to die simultaneously.
An example of this might be a husband who names his spouse as the beneficiary, but names his children as contingent beneficiaries. This will insure the policy proceeds are paid out immediately should the husband and wife die together.
It's important that if a beneficiary is a minor, a trustee be named. The trustee should be someone with whom the insured has a strong relationship and has a solid financial background. He or she should also be someone who is of sound mind, and preferably not entering their senior years.
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Kindly explain/elaborate following:
1. Can a Contingent Beneficiary be named when an Irrevocale Beneficiary is named in an Insurance Policy?
2. I have named my sister/cousin as a Beneficiary in my Insurance. Do they have Creditor protection? On my death, do they have to settle the claims of the creditors and pay Probate duty?
3. The Irrevocalbe Benificiary dies ( assumimg here that a contingent beneficiary cannot be named / or is not named, if allowed ), who gets the death benefits?
Many thanks.
Thanks for the note. The irrevocable beneficiary must sign off on any policy changes. The money should flow through directly to the beneficiary but this could depend on when the beneficiary were designated in relation to when the creditors were owed money.
If the primary beneficiary dies and there is no contingent beneficiary the money would go to the insured’s estate