A man lived with a girlfriend way back in the 1980s:
…in 1987, [the man] listed [his cohabitor] on a handwritten form as the sole beneficiary of his workplace retirement account. He never changed the beneficiary designation and died in 2015.
Two years later, the man and his cohabitor went their separate ways, but he left the beneficiary designation in place, unchanged and apparently unreviewed for all these decades. His family heirs, two brothers, won’t get the now million dollar inheritance; his cohabitor of those decades ago will, at least so far (the brothers have lost their court cases but have appeals in progress).
As it happens, when the man’s then-employer went to online employee account tracking and beneficiary designating, it never brought those paper forms into its computer systems. That’s no serious knock on this employer; lots of employers have left their paper documents outside their new computerized tracking systems.
The man’s employer, though, did send him repeated warnings about his beneficiary designation.
[The employer] said that it provided warnings when the company changed service providers, and online, and on his monthly statements, such as this one: “You don’t have any beneficiary designations online. Any prior beneficiary designations on file with the Plan will be retained by…, but are not viewable on this site.”
It’s anybody’s guess why the man didn’t review his beneficiary designation, but his reasons are irrelevant to this tale.
The caution: don’t be lazy or let life events be distractors. Every time there’s a life event—breaking up with a significant someone, marrying or deciding to live with a significant someone, birth of a child or grandchild or great-grandchild, death of an important someone, even something as mundane as an account trustee changing—it’s necessary, not just useful, to review all beneficiaries designated for all accounts a person might hold.
And make the changes that are appropriate for the new time.
The tale extends to financials generally. Financials are a family’s future; there’s no excuse for being “too tired” to review them and keep them current. Nor is “don’t have the time” any sort of excuse. There’s always time to deal with the family’s future.