Grandmother wants her 3 juvenile Grandsons to be Beneficiary?

[DHK]

Life insurance is passed by contract, not by wills or intestate. To not do so... can be a problem. List a beneficiary or a trust.

 

[Life Hawk]

Families can be brutal (stupid) when it comes to money. At least until the minors reach age this may be the best option depending on the carrier. The Will depends on the executor (another area of concern for some) and perhaps Grandmom can trust her financial advisor to get a college fund going for the kids now with the DB going into the funds when she passes

Just the attempt to set up a will shows the court an attempt on her part to be "diligent".

However, (you are correct) stupid family gums up the work when $ is involved. My fear would be that she is also relying on this policy to take care of FE... if so... it needs better direction.

She may need to be informed of all of this so that she can be helped to make better choices when she establishes who she leaves the money to.

 

[myinsurebiz]

Just the attempt to set up a will shows the court an attempt on her part to be "diligent".

However, (you are correct) stupid family gums up the work when $ is involved. My fear would be that she is also relying on this policy to take care of FE... if so... it needs better direction.

She may need to be informed of all of this so that she can be helped to make better choices when she establishes who she leaves the money to.

She has other coverage for her children and her FE.

This policy is strictly for the 3 grands that she is raising.

 

[Allen Trent]

put the beneficiary as the estate, put the desires in a Will if there is no Trust

This is a really bad idea & suggestion. Naming the estate guarantees that creditors will be paid first in probate. Even if she has no creditors like lenders or credit cards, she could have creditors from end of life hospital or nursing home state.

A living trust would be best. 2nd best would still be to name the grandchildren. Even though they cant directly receive the funds as minors, Probate Court will appoint a custodian and that person will have to annually account with documentation to the probate court to prove where the money is & if any has been spent that it is for the benefit of the child.

All other options like naming adults who you believe will handle the money or naming the estate come with much, much greater potential issues than a living trust or naming minors.

If a single mom doesnt have a living trust, I always name the minor children even though I know it will be administered while they are minors by the courts, but at least they will be protected by the courts to oversee how the money is handled.

 

[Mattschmidt]

She has other coverage for her children and her FE.

This policy is strictly for the 3 grands that she is raising.

Have Rob at settlers life help you out

 

[fed up]

This is a really bad idea & suggestion. Naming the estate guarantees that creditors will be paid first in probate. Even if she has no creditors like lenders or credit cards, she could have creditors from end of life hospital or nursing home state.

Allen, you are correct. In a perfect world, everyone would have a living trust and every horse would drink when led to a pond. In a perfect world a senior with Alzheimer's would not take an afternoon and shred almost every document in a file cabinet so that an estate is forced into probate. If you don't have the trust agreement and don't know the name of the law firm where do you look next? Placing the DB into the estate at the beginning of a policy will always pass suitability and changing the beneficiary after the policy has issued usually doesn't raise a red flag.
My FIL changed his Will 3X between retirement and death. He had a financial advisor and was a very smart man but he never had a trust. He shredded all but the first page of the last 2 Wills while "cleaning out his files" so we had no signatures, no law firm, a deceased attorney on the first Will which we knew had been changed. We knew his desires but he named a daughter in a different state as his executor which caused additional time to assign co-executors.