Beneficiary Designations
Minors, young adults and staged inheritance
Money arriving outright at eighteen or twenty-one is a common default and rarely what anyone would choose deliberately.
Beneficiary Designations
The forms that override the will, and how they go stale.
Beneficiary Designations
The annual review nobody schedules
An hour a year keeps an estate plan accurate, and the absence of it is why most plans no longer reflect their author.
Beneficiary Designations
Unmarried partners and what they are not entitled to
Long cohabitation creates almost no automatic rights in most jurisdictions, and the belief that it does causes real harm.
Beneficiary Designations
What institutions actually require after a death
Claiming an inherited asset involves paperwork that varies by institution, and knowing what is coming shortens the process.
Beneficiary Designations
Coordinating designations with the rest of the plan
Each form is completed separately, and the combined result is rarely what anyone intended.
Beneficiary Designations
Naming charities and non-individuals as beneficiaries
The tax treatment differs sharply from naming a person, and the drafting details cause more problems than the concept.
Beneficiary Designations
Inherited retirement accounts and the ten-year rule
Recent legislation compressed the distribution period for most heirs, which changed both the tax outcome and the planning.
Beneficiary Designations
Digital assets and account access
Executors are routinely locked out of accounts they have legal authority over, and the fix is arranged in advance.
Beneficiary Designations
Life insurance beneficiaries and the details that matter
Proceeds arrive quickly and outside probate, which makes the designation one of the most consequential forms in a household.
Beneficiary Designations
Divorce, remarriage and the designations nobody updated
A recurring and entirely avoidable outcome in which a former spouse inherits assets intended for someone else.
Beneficiary Designations
Payable-on-death and transfer-on-death accounts
A simple mechanism for avoiding probate on bank and investment accounts, with limitations worth understanding.
Beneficiary Designations
Naming a trust as beneficiary of a retirement account
Sometimes the right answer and technically demanding, with drafting errors that are expensive and discovered too late.
Beneficiary Designations
Beneficiary designations override almost everything
The form you filled in at a job you left in 2004 may determine who receives a substantial part of your estate.