Orange County Estate Planning Attorney Explains How Naming Your Trust as Beneficiary of Life Insurance Policy Can Be Smart..
Naming Your Trust as Beneficiary of Life Insurance Policy Can Give You Added Peace Of Mind
Naming your trust as beneficiary of life insurance policy is not necessary to avoid probate because the named beneficiary would receive the funds outside of probate. However, you may still want the protection of naming the trust the beneficiary of the policy.
An example we will discuss my own personal trust.
My wife and I have substantial life insurance policies, and each has our trust listed as beneficiary. We did this intentionally. If we were to get into a car wreck and I were to pass away and my wife outlive me for some short period of time, then if she were listed as my beneficiary the checks would come to her. In her name, then if she died shortly after and was never able to cash the checks, they would force our children to open probate simply to use the life insurance policy which was supposed to avoid probate all along. We instead named our trust the beneficiary so that if something happens our successor trustee can simply handle the issues and the money will come from the insurance into the trust and be able to go where we decided it would go when creating our trust. This allows us to avoid probate because anything over $150k would cause our beneficiaries to go through probate and having a trust allows us to avoid that worry.
I know it is complicated, but if you have any questions then give us a call and we can talk about how to help you avoid that added worry and protect your loved ones. Contact us today and set up an appointment.
We offer a many different resources and pamphlets on the subject of creating, updating and implementing estate plans. We also offer a regularly scheduled seminar in our office to help people determine what the best options are for them in their estate planning needs. We hope you sign up for one of our seminars to help you find your best options.