Are Your Company Benefit Plan Designations Up-to-Date? – Annapolis and Towson Estate Planning

On the first day of your new job, you probably talked to the Human Resources Director, who had you complete a huge stack of forms. You needed to sign off that you understood all the corporate policies and received the company handbook. You probably took a stab at how many exemptions to claim for payroll tax withholding and also completed Form I-9 affirming your eligibility to work. In the stack was most likely a form to choose a medical plan, as well as a form to designate your beneficiaries for employee benefit plans. This might include life insurance, stock purchase plans and your company’s 401(k) plan.

Forbes’s recent article, “Company Benefit Plan Designations Can Lead To A Huge Estate Planning Blunder,” says that now, you should fast-forward to when you met with your estate planning attorney to sign your estate documents. After a few meetings, you probably felt good that this was checked off your to do list.

However, assets that have a form of joint or survivor ownership, or have named beneficiaries, pass on to heirs by law and aren’t part of your probated estate. This usually applies to homes, bank and investment accounts, life insurance, retirement plans and corporate asset accumulation plans. In other words, these are all the plans and accounts where you originally named beneficiaries, but probably haven’t changed those beneficiaries since your first day of work.

When you started your job, you probably named your spouse as your primary beneficiary. If you named a contingency beneficiary, it was probably your children. The secondary designation is probably not something to which you gave a lot of thought. However, if your spouse predeceases you and if your plans designated your children as contingent beneficiaries, they would inherit all your company benefit plans at once, or upon reaching majority of age 18 or 21.

If that’s not what you want to happen, you need to review your work beneficiary designations. Chances are, you’d prefer to pass assets to your children in stages at, say, ages 25, 30, and 35. If you don’t make any changes, one of your largest bequests derived from employee stock plans and life insurance may not pass the way you want.

Talk to a qualified estate planning attorney for help concerning how your company’s benefits should be titled. The process of revising your beneficiary designations only takes a few minutes.

Reference: Forbes (April 22, 2019) “Company Benefit Plan Designations Can Lead To A Huge Estate Planning Blunder”

Sims & Campbell, LLC – Annapolis and Towson Estate Planning Attorneys

What Happens Next, When You’ve Become a Widow? – Annapolis and Towson Estate Planning

The loss of a spouse after decades of marriage is crushing enough, but then comes a tsunami of decisions about finances and tasks that demand attention when we are least able to manage it. Even highly successful business owners can find themselves overwhelmed, says The New York Times in the article “You’re a Widow, Now What?”

Most couples tend to divide up financial tasks, where one handles investments and the other pays the bills.  However, moving from a team effort to a solo one is not easy. For one widow, the task was made even harder by the fact that her husband opted to keep his portfolio in paper certificates, which he kept in his desk. His widow had to hire a financial advisor and a bookkeeper, and it took nearly a year to determine the value of the nearly 120 certificates. That was just one of many issues.

She had to settle the affairs of the estate, deal with insurance companies, and handle banks and credit cards that had to be cancelled. Her husband was also a partner in a business, which added another layer of complexity.

She decided to approach the chaos as if it were a business. She worked on it six to eight hours a day for many months, starting with organizing all the paperwork. That meant a filing system. A grief therapist advised her to get up, get dressed as if she was going to work and to make sure she ate regular meals. This often falls by the wayside when the structure of a life is gone.

This widow opened a consulting business to advise other widows on handling the practical aspects of settling an estate and also wrote a book about it.

A spouse’s death is one of the most emotionally wrenching events in a person’s life. Women live longer statistically, so they are more likely than men to lose a spouse and have to get their financial lives organized. The loss of a key breadwinner’s income can be a big blow for those who have never lived on their own. The tasks come fast and furious in a terribly emotional time.

Widows may not realize how vulnerable they are after the death of their long-time spouse. They should hold off on any big decisions and attack their to-do list in stages. The first tasks are to contact the Social Security administration, call the life insurance company and pay important bills, like utilities and property insurance premiums. If your husband was working, contact his employer for any unpaid salary, accrued vacation days and retirement plan benefits.

Next, name your adult children, trusted family members, or friends as agents for your financial and health care power of attorney.

How to take the proceeds from any life insurance policies depends upon your immediate cash needs and whether you can earn more from the payout by investing the lump sum. Make this decision part of your overall financial strategy, ideally after talking with a trusted financial advisor.

Determining a Social Security claiming strategy comes next. Depending on your age and income level, you may be able to increase your benefit. If you wait until your full retirement, you can claim the full survivor benefit, which is 100% of the spouse’s benefit. You could claim a survivor benefit at age 60, but it will be reduced for each month you claim before your full retirement age. If both spouses are at least 70 when the husband dies, a widow should switch to taking a survivor benefit if her benefit is smaller than her husband’s.

Expect it to be a while until you feel like you are on solid ground. If you were working when your spouse passed, consider continuing to work to keep yourself out and about in a familiar world. Anything that you can do to maintain your old life, like staying in the family home, if finances permit, will help as you go through the grief process.

Reference: The New York Times (April 11, 2019) “You’re a Widow, Now What?”

Sims & Campbell, LLC – Annapolis and Towson Estate Planning Attorneys

Make the Most of Beneficiary Designations – Annapolis and Towson Estate Planning

There’s an easy way for select assets to be passed to heirs, with no need for probate. It’s called the beneficiary designation.

Your will is a document that is used to pass property and assets to your heirs, but it’s not the only way.

Certain accounts or assets have beneficiary designations, where you provide instructions on who is to receive assets when you die. Most people don’t realize that the beneficiary designation is more powerful than the will, and directions in a will are overruled by the beneficiary designation.

Kiplinger’s recent article, “Beneficiary Designations: 5 Critical Mistakes to Avoid,” explains that assets including life insurance, annuities, and retirement accounts (think 401(k)s, IRAs, 403bs and similar accounts) all pass by beneficiary designation. Many financial companies also let you name beneficiaries on non-retirement accounts, known as TOD (transfer on death) or POD (pay on death) accounts.

Naming a beneficiary can be a good way to make certain your family will get assets directly. However, these beneficiary designations can also cause a host of problems. Make sure that your beneficiary designations are properly completed and given to the financial company, because mistakes can be costly. The article looks at five critical mistakes to avoid when dealing with your beneficiary designations:

  1. Failing to name a beneficiary. Many people never name a beneficiary for retirement accounts or life insurance. If you don’t name a beneficiary for life insurance or retirement accounts, the financial company has it owns rules about where the assets will go after you die. For life insurance, the proceeds will usually be paid to your estate. For retirement benefits, if you’re married, your spouse will most likely get the assets. If you’re single, the retirement account will likely be paid to your estate, which has negative tax ramifications. When an estate is the beneficiary of a retirement account, the assets must be paid out of the retirement account within five years of death. This means an acceleration of the deferred income tax—which must be paid earlier, than would have otherwise been necessary.
  2. Failing to consider special circumstances. Not every person should receive an asset directly. These are people like minors, those with specials needs, or people who can’t manage assets or who have creditor issues. Minor children aren’t legally competent, so they can’t claim the assets. A court-appointed conservator will claim and manage the money, until the minor turns 18. Those with special needs who get assets directly, will lose government benefits because once they receive the inheritance directly, they’ll own too many assets to qualify. People with financial issues or creditor problems can lose the asset through mismanagement or debts. Ask your attorney about creating a trust to be named as the beneficiary.
  3. Designating the wrong beneficiary. Sometimes a person will complete beneficiary designation forms incorrectly. For example, there can be multiple people in a family with similar names, and the beneficiary designation form may not be specific. People also change their names in marriage or divorce. Assets owners can also assume a person’s legal name that can later be incorrect. These mistakes can result in delays in payouts, and in a worst-case scenario of two people with similar names, can mean litigation.
  4. Failing to update your beneficiaries. Since there are life changes, make sure your beneficiary designations are updated on a regular basis.
  5. Failing to review beneficiary designations with your attorney. Beneficiary designations are part of your overall financial and estate plan. Speak with your estate planning attorney to determine the best approach for your specific situation.

Consider the beneficiary designation as part of your estate plan, and you’ll get the full picture of the power of a beneficiary designation. Just as you need to review and update your will to keep up with changes in your life and the law, you also need to update your beneficiary designations.

Reference: Kiplinger (April 5, 2019) “Beneficiary Designations: 5 Critical Mistakes to Avoid”

Sims & Campbell, LLC – Annapolis and Towson Estate Planning Attorneys