The paperwork that outlives the divorce.

A beneficiary designation is the form you signed with the plan, the insurance company, the bank or the brokerage saying who gets the money when you die. It is part of your contract with that institution, not part of your estate. When you die, the plan pays whoever is named on its own records, and the money never passes through your will or through probate. That is why a will that says "everything to my children" does not move a 401(k) or a life insurance policy that still names your former spouse. For a retirement or benefit plan covered by the federal pension law, ERISA, the law itself tells the people running the plan to follow the plan's own documents.

Yes, for the life insurance that covers federal civilian employees. The statute sets an order of payment that starts with the person the employee named in a signed, witnessed writing filed with the employing office, and then says in plain words that naming or canceling a beneficiary in a will has no effect. Private employer plans work the same way in practice, because the plan is told to follow its own records.

ERISA contains a sweeping clause that pushes state law aside where it touches a covered employee benefit plan. This is the clause the Supreme Court applied in the Egelhoff case below.

David Egelhoff had named his wife as the beneficiary of a life insurance policy and a pension plan through his employer. They divorced. He died a few weeks later without changing the forms. His children pointed to a Washington statute that automatically cancels a former spouse's beneficiary designation on divorce. The Supreme Court held that the state statute could not be applied to these ERISA plans. In plain terms: a state law that automatically strikes your ex-spouse off a beneficiary form does not reach an employer plan governed by ERISA. The plan still pays the name on its own paperwork. The Court's reasoning was that the state law forced plan administrators to pay "the beneficiaries chosen by state law, rather than to those identified in the plan documents."

William Kennedy named his wife Liv as the beneficiary of his employer savings and investment plan. Their divorce decree stripped Liv of any interest in that plan. He never filed a new beneficiary form. When he died, the plan paid Liv. His daughter, as executor of his estate, sued. A unanimous Supreme Court said the plan had done exactly what the law required, because the plan documents named Liv. In plain terms: giving up your rights in a divorce decree does not, by itself, take your name off the plan's beneficiary form, and the plan is not required to go hunting for divorce papers. The only cure is to file the new designation the plan asks for.

Warren Hillman named his then-wife Judy Maretta as the beneficiary of his Federal Employees' Group Life Insurance. He divorced, remarried, and never changed the form. When he died, Maretta collected. His widow sued under a Virginia statute that lets the person who would otherwise have inherited sue the former spouse to get the money back. The Supreme Court struck that clawback down. In plain terms: if you are a federal civilian employee, the FEGLI form on file governs, and a state law cannot undo it after the fact, either by canceling the designation or by making your ex hand the money over. The one route Congress did allow is described in the next entry.

Yes, but only if the paperwork reaches the government while you are alive. Federal law lets a divorce decree, a court order, or a court-approved property settlement direct where FEGLI money goes, and it must be received by the employing agency, or by the Office of Personnel Management if the person has left service, before the death. A decree sitting in a lawyer's file does nothing.

A Maine divorce decree ordered an Army sergeant to keep his life insurance in place for his children. He later changed his Servicemembers' Group Life Insurance designation so the money went to his new wife. The state court tried to fix this by imposing a constructive trust, which is a court-ordered obligation to hold money for someone else. The Supreme Court refused to let that stand. In plain terms: for SGLI, the service member's own written designation on file controls, and a state divorce court cannot redirect the proceeds afterwards. If a settlement is meant to protect children, the SGLI election itself has to say so.

The statute sets an order: the person the member designated in writing first, then the widow or widower, then children, then parents, then the executor of the estate, then next of kin. Because the designation sits at the top, an old form naming a former spouse is paid before anyone else.

Nothing changes by itself. Every one of these is a separate form, filed with a separate institution, and each one has to be done on its own. Work through the list and get written confirmation of each change. (1) Employer retirement plans: 401(k), 403(b), 457, profit sharing, employee stock ownership. File a new beneficiary designation with the plan administrator or its recordkeeper, not with your employer's human resources inbox alone. (2) Traditional and Roth IRAs, SEP and SIMPLE IRAs, and any rollover IRA: a new beneficiary form with each custodian, one per account. (3) Life insurance through work, including any supplemental or voluntary policy, plus accidental death coverage. (4) Life insurance you bought privately, and annuities. (5) Health savings accounts. (6) Defined benefit pensions, which usually have a separate survivor election as well as a death beneficiary. (7) Bank and credit union accounts with a payable-on-death instruction, sometimes labeled in trust for or Totten trust. (8) Brokerage and mutual fund accounts registered transfer on death. (9) Paper and electronic savings bonds. (10) For federal employees: FEGLI life insurance, the Thrift Savings Plan, unpaid compensation, and the CSRS or FERS retirement designation, which are four different forms. (11) For service members: SGLI, and the Survivor Benefit Plan election. (12) Deeds with a transfer on death or beneficiary designation, where your state has them. Also check anything with a named agent rather than a beneficiary: powers of attorney, health care directives, and the executor and guardian nominations in your will.

OPM treats each benefit as its own designation, and the change only counts when the office that holds your file has actually received it. A form that arrives after you die does nothing.

No. The Thrift Savings Plan pays the beneficiary on file with it, and says so directly.

A retirement plan covered by ERISA generally cannot be assigned away, but there is an exception for a particular kind of court order. It divides the benefit between the participant and an "alternate payee", who can be a spouse, former spouse, child or other dependent. Two things matter. The order has to contain specific information the law requires. And it is the plan, not your judge and not your lawyer, that decides in the first instance whether the order qualifies. Send the draft to the plan before it is signed.

For many employer retirement plans, the law does not simply let you name whoever you like. If you are married, the plan must treat your spouse as the one who receives the account or the survivor annuity, and you can only name somebody else if your spouse signs off. The consent has to be in writing, has to say what it is giving up, and has to be witnessed by a plan representative or a notary. Two consequences follow at divorce. Before the divorce is final you may not be able to remove your spouse without that signature. After it is final, if you remarry, the new spouse can become the automatic beneficiary and an old form naming somebody else may not hold.

The Uniform Probate Code is a model statute written by the Uniform Law Commission. It is not federal law and it is not in force anywhere until a state legislature enacts it, and states that enact it often change it. Section 2-804 says that, unless a governing instrument, a court order or a marital settlement says otherwise, divorce or annulment cancels gifts to the former spouse and to the former spouse's relatives, cancels powers of appointment given to them, and cancels their nomination as executor, trustee, conservator, agent or guardian. It also severs a joint tenancy with right of survivorship into a tenancy in common. Crucially, "governing instrument" is defined broadly enough to include life insurance policies, payable-on-death accounts, transfer-on-death registrations and retirement plans. That breadth is exactly why the Egelhoff and Hillman decisions matter: where federal law governs the plan, the state version of this section does not reach it. We are not saying which states have adopted it, and you should not assume yours has.

Yes. The drafters wrote in a fallback for exactly the situation the Supreme Court created: if the section is knocked out by federal law, the former spouse who received the money is told to give it back to the person who would have taken it. Be careful with this. In Hillman v. Maretta the Supreme Court held that Virginia's version of that fallback was itself displaced by federal law, at least for federal employee life insurance. Whether a similar clawback works in any other setting is unsettled and depends on your state and the type of benefit. We are not resolving that here.

A power of attorney is a document naming somebody to act for you, often over money and property. The safest assumption is that yours is still live until you revoke it in writing and tell everyone holding a copy, including your bank. Many states have enacted the Uniform Power of Attorney Act, another Uniform Law Commission model act. Under it, the agent's authority ends when the principal revokes it, when the agent dies or resigns, when the document itself terminates, and when an action is filed to dissolve or annul the marriage or for legal separation, unless the document says otherwise. Note two traps in that last one. It only helps if your state adopted this provision, and it can be switched off by the document's own wording. Do not rely on it. Sign a new power of attorney and a written revocation, date them, and deliver the revocation to every institution and person who has the old one.

Because a health care agent decides for you at the moment you cannot decide for yourself, and that decision cannot wait while somebody looks for your divorce file. If your directive still names your former spouse, the hospital has a document that on its face gives that person authority over your treatment, and it may be honored. Some states have addressed this. The 2023 Uniform Health-Care Decisions Act, a model act, revokes the appointment of a spouse as agent once a divorce petition is filed or a decree issued, unless the directive says otherwise, and drops a spouse in that situation out of the default surrogate list. That is a safety net, not a plan. Sign a new directive naming somebody else, revoke the old one, and give copies to your doctor, your hospital and the new agent. Under the same model act you can revoke by any act that clearly shows you mean to, including telling a health care professional out loud, but a signed replacement is far easier for a hospital to act on.

You can name in your will, or in another signed writing, the person you want to raise your children if you cannot. Under the Uniform Probate Code that nomination is revocable while you are alive, takes effect on your death or on a finding that you cannot care for the child, and the person named has to file an acceptance. Two things to know at divorce. Your nomination does not override the other parent's own rights; a nomination generally matters when no parent is available. And if your will nominates your former spouse's relative, section 2-804 of the same model act would cancel that nomination on divorce in a state that has adopted it. If you want a specific person named, sign a new will saying so.

Treasury will reissue a Series EE or I bond to change the owner, co-owner or beneficiary, and the paperwork is FS Form 4000. A change because of divorce is allowed but Treasury does not require it, which means an old bond naming your former spouse simply stays that way until you act. Reissued EE and I bonds are issued in electronic form only, so the new owner needs a TreasuryDirect account.

These are the quiet ones. A payable-on-death instruction on a bank account, and a transfer-on-death registration on a brokerage or mutual fund account, hand the balance straight to the named person when you die, outside your will. They are easy to set up and just as easy to forget. Check every bank, credit union and brokerage account, including ones you rarely use.

Yes, and the tax result changes sharply depending on who is named. If your spouse is the named beneficiary the account carries on as their health savings account. If anyone else is named, the account stops being a health savings account on your death and its value becomes taxable to that person in the year you die. An out-of-date form naming a former spouse therefore does two things at once: it sends the money to the wrong person, and after the divorce that person is no longer your spouse, so the favorable treatment does not apply either.

An IRA is a contract between you and the custodian holding it. The beneficiary form you signed with that custodian controls, and each IRA has its own form. IRAs are not employer plans, so the spousal consent rule described above does not apply to them, and a new spouse does not automatically displace an old designation. If you have several IRAs at several firms, you have several forms to update.

It may. In a number of states, the moment a divorce petition is filed the court's own paperwork carries automatic restraining orders that bind both people, and those orders commonly forbid changing the beneficiaries on insurance or creating or altering a transfer that takes effect at death. Whether your state does this, when the orders bite, and exactly what they cover varies, and we are not going to guess for you. Look at the summons or the initial order you were served with, and look at your own state court's self-help pages, before you touch anything. Changing a designation in breach of such an order can be punished and can be undone. One official illustration of what these orders look like, from California's Judicial Council summons form, is quoted here. It is an example of one state's form. It is not the rule in every state and it may not be the rule in yours. If you are already restrained, the route is a written agreement with the other side or a court order permitting the change, and you can normally still update a will, a power of attorney and a health care directive, though your own state's order may say otherwise.