Beneficiary designation checker

General guidance only. This checklist helps you identify accounts to review - it doesn't access your actual account records. Confirm and update your actual beneficiary designations directly with each account provider. See our full disclaimer.

Beneficiary designation checklist

Recent life changes

Have you had a major life change recently?

Your beneficiary review summary

Get an estate planning attorney consultation - free

An estate planning attorney reviews your complete estate plan alongside your beneficiary designations to ensure everything works together consistently, and can help coordinate updates across multiple accounts. Free initial consultation in most areas.

Why do beneficiary designations override my will?

Assets with a valid beneficiary designation - retirement accounts, life insurance, payable-on-death (POD) and transfer-on-death (TOD) accounts - pass directly to the named beneficiary by contract, completely outside of probate and independent of whatever your will says. Even if your will explicitly states something different, the beneficiary designation controls for these specific assets.

This is one of the most common and consequential estate planning mistakes: someone updates their will after a divorce but forgets that their ex-spouse is still the named beneficiary on their 401(k) or life insurance policy, meaning the ex-spouse still receives that asset regardless of the updated will. Beneficiary designations need to be reviewed and updated independently, not assumed to be automatically covered by will updates.

Use the will and testament builder to address your residuary estate, but remember these designated accounts need separate, direct attention with each account provider.

What is a "per stirpes" designation and why does it matter for beneficiary forms too?

Just like will provisions, many beneficiary designation forms allow specifying "per stirpes" (so a predeceased beneficiary's share passes to their children) versus "per capita" or simple redistribution among surviving beneficiaries. Many people never actively choose between these options and default to whatever the form's standard setting is, without realizing there's a meaningful choice being made either way.

This is particularly important for beneficiaries with their own children - failing to specify how a predeceased beneficiary's share should be handled can result in outcomes that don't reflect what you'd actually want for that branch of the family.

What happens if I name a minor child as a direct beneficiary?

Naming a minor child directly as a beneficiary on a retirement account or life insurance policy typically creates complications - minors generally can't directly receive or manage significant assets, meaning a court-supervised guardianship of the estate may be required to manage the funds until the child reaches adulthood, adding cost, delay, and court oversight that could have been avoided with proper planning.

A common alternative is naming a trust for the benefit of minor children as the designated beneficiary instead of the children directly, allowing a trustee to manage and distribute funds according to your specified terms without court-supervised guardianship. If you have minor children, review this specifically with an estate planning attorney rather than simply listing the children's names on the beneficiary form. Our living trust vs. will guide and estate tax estimator can help you think through how this fits into your broader estate plan.

Frequently asked questions

At minimum, review after any major life event - marriage, divorce, birth or adoption of a child, death of a named beneficiary, or a significant new account (new job with a new 401k, new life insurance policy). Beyond event-triggered reviews, a periodic check every few years is a reasonable practice even without an obvious trigger, since it's easy to forget about older accounts (like a 401k from a job you left years ago) that still have outdated designations sitting unnoticed. Many financial institutions make reviewing and updating designations simple through an online portal, removing much of the friction that causes people to put this off.

It depends significantly on the type of asset and applicable state and federal law - this is not a safe assumption to rely on. Some states have "revocation upon divorce" statutes that automatically remove an ex-spouse as a beneficiary on certain assets, but these statutes don't apply universally to all account types, and importantly, federal law (ERISA) generally preempts state revocation statutes for employer-sponsored retirement plans like 401(k)s, meaning an ex-spouse can sometimes still inherit a retirement account despite a state law that would otherwise remove them. Never assume divorce automatically handles this - proactively update every beneficiary designation directly after a divorce.

A contingent (secondary) beneficiary receives the asset if your primary beneficiary has already passed away at the time of your death. Without a named contingent beneficiary, if your primary beneficiary predeceases you and you haven't updated the form, the asset often defaults to your estate - which then must go through probate, defeating the purpose of having a direct beneficiary designation in the first place. Always name at least 1 contingent beneficiary on every account, not just a primary, to avoid this common gap.

Yes, though this requires careful drafting to qualify as a "see-through" or "conduit" trust under IRS rules, which affects how required distributions from the retirement account are calculated after your death. Naming a trust incorrectly, or without meeting these technical IRS requirements, can result in unfavorable accelerated distribution timelines and tax consequences for the trust beneficiaries. This is a technical area where retirement account beneficiary designations intersect with trust law and tax law, making professional guidance particularly valuable if you're considering naming a trust rather than an individual.

These designations, available on many bank accounts, investment accounts, and in some states even real estate and vehicles, let you name a beneficiary who receives the asset directly upon your death, bypassing probate, similar to a retirement account or life insurance beneficiary designation. This is a simple, low-cost probate avoidance tool for specific assets, often used alongside (or sometimes instead of) more complex tools like a living trust. Confirm with each financial institution whether TOD/POD designation is available and add one for any account where you'd otherwise want a direct, probate-avoiding transfer to a specific person.