Most people are often unclear about this complicated, yet simple question. A Will is a legal document that sets forth your wishes regarding the distribution of your property and the care of your minor children.  Life insurance is a legal contract between you and the life insurance company who issued the policy.  The simple answer to this question is that your beneficiary designation on your life insurance policy is where the life insurance benefit proceeds will be distributed.  It doesn’t matter if you have made different arrangements in your will to split it differently, the will will not be followed for that.  Your life insurance contract is a stronger legal document and under normal circumstances supersedes your Will every time.

Even the beneficiary designation on your 401k, IRA, and annuity contracts you own are not subject to your WILL.  When you die, these policies are going to transfer to whomever you have listed as the legal beneficiary. 

When was the last time you updated your life insurance beneficiaries?  Are they all still alive?  Have you remarried and forgotten to change the beneficiary to your new spouse?  Did you have children from both marriages, if so how are you going to deal with that?  What about the grandchildren. 

By now you can see that it is vital to give adequate thought into who the primary, contingent and even tertiary beneficiaries should be.  By assigning the proper beneficiary designations you will spare your family many complications and frustrations at your death, and also save lots of time and potential taxes and administrative costs if probate is needed.

When deciding about life insurance beneficiaries, it is important to have contingent and tertiary beneficiaries in case your primary beneficiary predeceases you. If you want your life insurance benefits to go directly to children (especially children from a prior marriage) upon death, then you must name them as a primary beneficiary or a Trust for them. 

Speak with a qualified lawyer before naming minor children, without a Trust, as primary beneficiaries.  If not done correctly the court might assume guardianship causing undue costs until your children reach the age of majority in your state.  You may also be able to determine when the life insurance benefits are to be paid out.  They can be paid as one lump sum if you think your children are successfully able to emotionally handle the financial benefit.  Or you can have it spread out over several years on specific birthdays if you believe that will be more beneficial.

Finally, review your beneficiary designations at least annually to make sure your intent is still the same as it was when you created the designations.  Marriages, divorces, births, deaths, and financial situations of your beneficiaries may have changed your considerations.

So you see that selecting your primary, secondary and tertiary beneficiary is critical in the complex area of estate planning.  speaking with a Tax Free Retirement Specialist who can  help you update your beneficiary list and also coordinate the conversations with your tax advisor and estate lawyer is critical to a ensuring that your final expression of love is carried out the way you intended.  Click here to find Tax Free Retirement Specialist in your area.

There are some common ways you can designate all three beneficiaries depending on the specific situation you have.  There are also numerous other ways you can do your beneficiary designations.  You can move anyone from secondary to primary if so desired.  If you have no family you can even make the charity(s) your primary beneficiary.  We’ve included a Table with the specific language critical to beneficiary designation. Most of the secondary beneficiary designation examples on this table use specific secondary beneficiary language allowing the benefits of a predeceased child to be passed to their children so that the insured’s grandchildren are not disinherited.  If you don’t want the grandchildren to inherit your children’s share you would delete the phrase “if living, otherwise, his lineal descendants per stirpes.”   This allows the deceased child’s share to be redistributed to the remaining living children.

Click here for the Beneficiary Table

What is Life Insurance?

Cost of Life Insurance?

“Fortunately, the life insurance industry has almost none of the problems of Wall Street… Until recently, permanent life insurance was arguably the financial industry’s most complex instrument. Fortunately, due to its complexity, life insurance is highly regulated to assure there are always sufficient, safe assets to honor its guarantees. This is referred to as statutory accounting. For more than 100 years, every life insurance death benefit has been paid.

All life insurance companies use statutory accounting. In addition, publicly traded insurance companies use GAAP accounting. It allows them to report the expected profitability of products that require reserves to back their contractual liabilities.”

Mr. Jones doesn’t take the point of view that life insurance companies can fail, several have indeed failed.  But for the other 99% of them, they have a proven track record of stability.  In fact, of those few life insurance companies that have failed, the other insurance companies bought up all of the failed companies policies.  Whole life and universal life insurance products are highly regulated for payment stability and have successfully been through good times and bad.

So let’s look at how about 99% of us struggle to make ends meet.  Many of us are in a position where we think that our lifestyle is consuming all of our earnings.  The belief is that every time we achieve a greater level of affluence, we increase the level of spending to account for that new found level of income.  There is an entire school of research called “behavioral economics” that says a human will consume what it earns or all that comes into his or her personal economy.  This is why it makes it difficult to save.  We’ve got to become better savers for our future retirement.

At www.lifeinsurancethinktank.com we educate people how to accomplish retirement savings and at the same time protect their loved ones with a life insurance product.  This can be an entirely new concept for many people who are accustomed to investing their savings in the highly volatile marketplace and losing lots of sleep watching it go up and down.

We hear that people think that insurance costs too much.  In a much published study, people know they need insurance but think they can’t afford it. However once educated on the true cost of insurance, they realize it is significantly less than they thought it was and they really can afford to protect their loved ones.  There are numerous choices of life insurance to choose from to protect and create a retirement plan; such as term life, universal, and indexed universal life insurance.

A universal life insurance policy is a perfect choice to begin a retirement plan.  Besides the obvious life insurance benefit, it force starts a savings plan that is guaranteed safe.  While term life insurance is obviously less expensive, the universal life policy is earning a higher rate of interest than any other safe investment product on the market today.  This savings element is compounded annually and if held for 10, 20, 30 or more years, it can yield a significant sum of money to supplement other retirement income sources.  Additionally, this money is tax deferred, safe from creditors in many states, has cash value you can borrow tax-free, and most likely has a living long-term care benefit.

At this point, would you say this is an expense or a savings? Is it a smart place to put your money? Any place you can save money is a smart place.  So the real question is, “is this a smarter place to put your money?”  Life Insurance Think Tank would suggest to you that buying a permanent life insurance policy that protects your family for the rest of your life is an excellent choice because it provides:

• Living benefits of long-term care should you require it while you are alive
• A death benefits when you pass away
• Tax-free payment of proceeds to your beneficiaries
•  guaranteed safe place to save money
• An excellent place to earn compounded tax-deferred interest
• The option of taking your cash out tax-free to for any purchase
• The option to take your cash tax-free to supplement your income when you retire
• Does not require you to pay it back into the insurance policy!

Permanent life insurance has stood the test of time and proven useful for a very long time.  Life insurance has been a common place for Americans to save money for decades.  But then the financial markets became all the rage to save money.  We’ve been through some difficult times with the markets and no one knows what’s going to happen in the future.  However, even during the previous rough market times, not one person who had their savings in a life insurance policy ever lost money.  Can you say that for anyone you know who was invested in the stock market?  Learn more about life insurance at www.lifeinsurancethinktank.com.  Find a Tax-Free Retirement Specialist here who can help answer your questions about creating a tax advantaged strategy for protecting your family and a retirement plan.

What is Life Insurance?

Life Insurance Calculator?

Because of the true cost of long-term care to someone that needs it; insurers have increased LTC polices substantially over the last few years.  Several companies have pulled back and just as many have left the market completely.

Even though fewer companies are selling LTC insurance, the need for long-term-care planning remains greater than ever.  Today, there is a great deal of attention that is being focused on the aging of the population. As the Baby Boomer generation begins to reach retirement age, people are starting to realize that there may come a time when they could need assistance due to declining health or ability.

Because of increased life expectancy, many people will live 20-30 or more years beyond their normal retirement age. Yet, while they may be living longer, this does not necessarily mean that they will be living healthier. Therefore, from a financial standpoint, it is imperative that people plan ahead not only for basic living expenses in retirement, but also for the high cost of long-term care. From a retirement standpoint, a long-term care event is one of the few things that can really put a dent in someone’s retirement plan.

For those people who are looking to buy some sort of long-term care coverage, there is now more choices available then traditional long term-care insurance.  There are hybrid products that combine life insurance and long-term care coverage.  Several of these hybrid policies have a complete Return of Premium to the owner should they decide to cancel the policy before they use the long-term care benefit or have died.  There are single premium life insurance products that allow the owner to tap the death benefit while alive, as a living benefit, to pay for long-term care.  With both of these policies, if the LTC benefit is not used, the death benefit is paid to the beneficiary.

Finally, with the cost of long-term care increasing it may not be affordable to buy a policy that covers 100% of the expected daily expense.  That is the beauty of a long-term care insurance policy; it can be created for just about any amount of daily benefit that is affordable.  This allows the owner to share in the cost of future long-term care events if they occur and at the same time pay a lower premium for the reduced benefit.  Remember, having some long-term care insurance is always better than having none.

Speak with a Retirement Solutions Specialist to learn more about what are the best options for you.

What is Life Insurance?

Cost of Life Insurance?