Should I Change my Beneficiary After a Family Conflict?

You may have a term life insurance policy or a permanent policy. Either way, if anything were to ever happen between you and your designated beneficiary, it could make you wonder what you can do if your policy has many, many more years left to be in effect. Do you change your beneficiary? What if the conflict is resolved in a few years and you would want them to once again be the beneficiary to your policy?

Knowing when to Change

Many conflicts can arise in family relationships. Often, they might seem severe or intense but after a time they pass giving way to a rekindling of the relationship. As far as life insurance goes, the way you get along with your family members may not seem to have much bearing. That is, it does not, until you have a conflict with a member of your family who is designated as the life insurance beneficiary.

You can reassign a different beneficiary. All you would need to do is contact your insurance company and request the change. They may make you fill out a form to make the change official. You would need to ask for a copy of the specific form they require, fill it out and submit it to them. This process involves very little else in order to make the change.

It will not change anything else that is part of the policy terms, nor will it affect the policy premium. The problem with making a change to a beneficiary is knowing when it is really in your best interest to do so. This is something you will have to give some thought to before going ahead with making the change.

It is not as if you cannot ever change the designated beneficiary back to the original individual you named when you obtained the policy. You can make the change back to this person any time you feel ready. Your insurance company is not likely to have limits on how often you can change the designated beneficiary, but you probably do not want to go about this task frequently. The change can be limited if your life insurance policy has what is known as an irrevocable beneficiary.

This type of clause would mean that before you can officially make the change, you would need to get the consent of the beneficiary first. They would need to agree to the change before it could be made. This may not be the most convenient situation for a change needed after a family disagreement. Fortunately, most life insurance policies have revocable beneficiaries. This means that after that awful fight with Aunt Gladys you do not necessarily need her to know that you have switched your beneficiary to Cousin Fred.

Making the Decision

Only you can determine, after careful thought, if it is best to go ahead and make the change to your policy. For most policies, you have a revocable beneficiary designation which allows you to go ahead and make a new designation when you like. It is relatively easy to make the change with your life insurance company.

The hard part may be actually going through with the change. If it turns out the family issue is something you are able to resolve, it is probably not necessary to go through with making the change. But, if you are sensing your policy is something that may be needed relatively soon, you probably would do well to make the change to the beneficiary after the family conflict if you are really certain it is something you cannot resolve.

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