how can I add beneficiaries to my life insurance tonight. I am flying out with my wife tomorrow morning and we are the only beneficiaries fo...

Question

how can I add beneficiaries to my life insurance tonight. I am flying out with my wife tomorrow morning and we are the only beneficiaries for each other.

Answer

Probably you can't. You normally need a change of beneficiary form from the insurance company. Once filled out you would send it in. That takes about a week or two to do.

Only other suggestion is to contact your insurance agent in the morning and see what they say.

The other side is that I get this a lot about husbands and wives travelling together and afraid both will perish. In over 30 years this has yet to happen with thousands of clients. The odds are against it.

Answer

Mr Kaplan is correct in his analysis. Many legal cases exist in Florida courts that indicate that until the Insurance Carrier itself receives ( and sometimes acknowledges) the change of beneficiary in writing from you the change is not valid nor binding. One temporary measure may be to buy one of the "quickly" type policies available at the airports and name the beneficiary of your choice and wire/ fax the receipt and policy then to your heirs. By the way this also occurs on changes to Stock accounts with Securities and other type TOD or POD type accounts, and the troubling matter is that it may take several months sometimes just to get the acknowledgement that the Transfer Agent or firm has made such changes.

Something that you should consider is to be sure all of your policies are in a safe and organized place and that your heirs or descendants/ beneficiaires know where to find the same. The Insurance carriers have no controlling law that requires them to periodically check on their insureds to see if they are still alive, therefore many a policy goes unclaimed after death for years and may never be found by the heirs simply because there is no forced procedure on the Insurance industry. The industry is content with retaining the funds at its convenience for many years and then after 10 years of not being claimed (or whatever the state law may be) and then getting around to giving the proceeds to the "unclaimed funds" division of the state. I guess we chose the wrong field, right??

Hope these comments help some.