The best advice that I can ever give adult children of older parents is to review their financial, annuity and insurance policies to see if their beneficiary designations are according to their wishes. A lot of times, one parent passes away and nobody bothers to check the beneficiary designations. Sometimes the deceased spouse is still listed as a beneficiary. This can create a major headache, especially if not corrected.
I recently ran into another situation where an adult son's ex-girlfriend was named as a beneficiary. The parent thought that his adult son would eventually marry this girl and never got around to changing the beneficiary.
On another case, a lady with dementia in a nursing home was named as a beneficiary. This really complicates things especially when the parent has already passed away. The lady in the nursing home is due the proceeds for their share even if she passes away before paying it. You have to go find out who is handling her affairs, where to send the check, how to apply for the beneficiary share when the person (the lady in the nursing home) cannot legally sign for herself. It just becomes an administrative nightmare.
Of course, sometimes there is no beneficiary at all named like with individual accounts. Individual accounts without a beneficiary designation are guaranteed to have to go through probate if the person has an estate size of more than $75,000 in most states. You can avoid this with a Revocable Living Trust or by adding a transfer on death clause to the individual account.
Personally, I have been in business for over 30 years and I have yet to see the "perfect" estate of a parent who had all their i's dotted and t's crossed. They may be out there somewhere, but I have not seen anyone's estate like this in my thirty plus years. It pays to follow up on these beneficiary designations to make sure that there are no hidden surprises.
We offer a beneficiary review service for an hourly fee of $100 per hour with a $400 maximum. This is a small price to pay to get things right, in my opinion.
See our Form ADV 2A disclosures on our web site at https://marianfs.com.
