Changing Your Life Insurance After Getting Married

Changing your life insurance after getting married is not complicated and there’s not a lot of paperwork involved. Most life insurance companies use for young couples in their 20s, or for those older than that, what is known as a Change of Beneficiary designation form that is widely accepted. You can acquire this by a direct contact with your representative or through the form download section of their website. Either way, it’s not going to take up too much time or effort to put in the details. The portion of the process that will take some forethought is figuring out how to set up the beneficiary process. These details are very important because there are legal ramifications that must be considered from all angles. The choices you make will depend on what your priorities are and who will need the most financial assistance if you’re unable to provide for them any longer.

Providing for Stepchildren Properly

The reason you may want some help with this is if your new spouse has children from a previous marriage. If this is true, then you want to make sure that your children, as well as your stepchildren, are going to be taken care of if something happens. Without making sure that all the names are correct on these forms, there have been cases when stepchildren were left out of the compensation process. Obviously, this could cause some serious family issues especially if there is no obvious explanation on why that was not corrected beforehand. It might also cause some unnecessary lawsuits to be filed which can delay the entire compensation process.

If you are going to adopt these stepchildren, then this should ensure them a place right alongside your birth children, but the forms still need to include their names. For a spouse who is going to benefit first, and then your children second, this is how the names should be given to your attorney or life insurance representative. Let them know what your inheritance priority is and who should get how much. When you set this up ahead of time, you also eliminate the chances that a state court will have to divide up the estate and perhaps not honor any of your wishes.

Setting Up an Insurance Trust

Those clients who are going to set up a trust for their children and stepchildren need to make sure that a trustee is named. This person will manage the trust of funds for those minors until they become legal adults or a certain specified age. Once this happens, then the funds can be disbursed however you laid out originally. Also, you’ll see that most life insurance companies have information they can share with you regarding this topic using some easily accessible websites. Using these methods, you can look through and review this data with the people who will be benefiting from this life insurance policy.

Although the process is easy, you may still have some questions about altering your life insurance after getting married. There may be reasons why you want to keep it as-is, or there may be outside influence to make other changes. Whatever your reasoning, just make sure you ask all the questions necessary so you’re not guessing as to the proper procedure or forgetting something important. Submit these online or through direct contact, whichever method works best for your current schedule. Also, it will help you feel more confident in the decisions you make for not just your immediate family, but those who might have to make up the difference financially if you pass away suddenly.