California Divorce | Importance Of Changing Beneficiaries After Divorce
Tim: Good. The beneficiaries and then we talked about a little bit on health or life specifically.
I don’t know if we touched on the importance of changing beneficiaries after the Divorce has finalized because we’ve all heard the whole stories not only with health life insurance but with…
Jon: Financial services and 401K’s and all those.
Tim: Yes, and investments where they are not changed. And is it going to your spouse?
And I’m sure that if you’re Divorce that wasn’t the intention. Because the important thing to know is, when it comes to you and let me know if this is correct or not.
When it comes to your Divorce judgment your Divorce Decree if you will, if you said, you’re keeping your life insurance policy or these investments, and you die and you haven’t changed your beneficiaries, that beneficiaries will over-way the ruling of the court.
Jon: That’s correct. So once the Divorce is final, that is the time when you are allowed to make the changes and it does makes sense to make the changes.
And then part of that though, one of the natural things to do is to go ahead and make changes on, when I’m going to make my kids as the beneficiary.
The problem with that is you have to be careful is no one is going to give a $100,000 policy to a six year old.
So you only have to worry about that. But the question is who handles that money during that time between until they become age 18?
And even once they become age 18, do you really want your child inheriting the $100,000 not inhering but getting a $100,000.
So this is where even when you separate, it’s the time to look at things like a state planning and things of that nature, so, that you can make sure that the policy benefits really are doled out way you want them to be doled out.
So it’s really a good time to kind of look at all your financial picture. Not just the insurance but the state planning. Look at things like 401K’s, look at things like your own retirement.
Tim: Yes.
Jon: What you’re going to do now? You can’t rely perhaps on your ex-husband’s pension.
Tim: Right.
Jon: What you’re going to do?
Tim: So it’s a really good time to take a step back and kind of put all your financial pieces in order.