After months of negotiation, a final deal has been reached, or a judge has made a final decision. You breathe a deep sigh of relief that the divorce is done. Time to move on. However, once a final Judgment is entered, there is still follow up work that must be done.
One of the items most often missed by recently divorced individuals is changing their beneficiaries on life insurance policies and retirement accounts. The Judgment may require your ex-spouse to be a beneficiary of life insurance if you are paying maintenance. It may also require that your children be named as beneficiaries if your children are minors or attending college. Ensuring that your life insurance beneficiaries are properly designated alleviates future disputes against your estate.
For retirement accounts, the beneficiary forms completed while the marriage was still intact remain in effect after the divorce. As a result, your ex-spouse could receive retirement accounts in your name after your death. A recent Illinois case, Mowen v. Kelly, the ex-husband never changed the beneficiary designation of his retirement accounts following the divorce. As a result, the Appellate Court found that the ex-wife was entitled to the proceeds in the account, rather than the ex-husband’s heir. This was most likely not what the ex-husband would have wanted, but his failure to follow up on paperwork after the Judgment resulted in his ex-wife getting money she would not have otherwise been entitled to receive.
Ensuring that your financial accounts have been changed to reflect your new reality following the divorce will save you and your heirs headaches in the future.
The attorneys at Collins Family Law have significant experience in handling all aspects of a divorce, including these types of post decree issues.