Beneficiary

The Importance of Naming Beneficiaries One of the most overlooked yet important elements of estate planning is the naming of beneficiaries. When opening an IRA, a retirement account at work, or purchasing an insurance policy, the owner (account holder) is asked to name a beneficiary, and most name a spouse or children. It is important to name a beneficiary to prevent property from having to pass through probate, the legal process of settling an estate after death, which can be a long and expensive process. Assigning beneficiaries ensures the owner’s assets are distributed directly to beneficiaries according to his or her wishes. In addition to naming at least one primary beneficiary, it is important to choose a Per Stirpes* designation (a…

event of death without a will, the trust can be used for managing the entitled assets. Calabasas Trust Administration Attorney A trust administration attorney can explain the different types of trusts to decide what works best for the situation. In setting up a trust, it needs a federal tax identification to transfer the assets to the trust. If the distribution plan involves multiple trusts, each trust needs its own federal tax identification for entitlement. Assets not retitled to the trust…

Having to confront a belligerent beneficiary is an awful position for an executor. Unfortunately for executors, beneficiaries have rights to an estate that executors must respect. (Refer to the article Know your Beneficiaries to review beneficiary rights.) So, an executor must try to handle a belligerent beneficiary as described in the article How to Handle a Belligerent Beneficiary. Conversely, if all efforts fail to appease the belligerent beneficiary, the executor has to take action to move…

There are exceptions to this rule: third-party beneficiaries and assignment or delegations. A third-party beneficiary can be named to receive the benefits of a contract. In order to be a third-party beneficiary, there must be a clear expression to give the benefit to the third-party in the agreement. An assignment is when a third-party is given the rights to the benefits of the contract. This is not allowed if the original contract prohibits assignments, or if it will substantially change…

The distribution of beneficiary age ranges compared to money spent by age range is disproportionally skewed left. The younger 44% of beneficiaries use only 37% of the $375 billion that goes towards Medicare annually. People over 80 account for 24% of all Medicare beneficiaries and also consume 33% of Medicare’s budget. It is estimated that by the year 2050, the population of people over 80 will triple, from 13 million to 39 million. This is a huge problem for the Center for Medicare and…

I. Introduction The parties involved in this problem are: 1. Benedict the owner of a 9 ha farmland; 2. Adrian the purchaser of the 9 ha land; and 3. Catherine a beneficiary of the purchase price. The primary issue raises by the problem is one of contract interpretation and the approach should be in accordance with the meaning which the parties actually attached to the words in dispute.¹ Specifically, two issues concern Benedict and the other two parties: 1. Whether Benedict can enforce the…

sports games. The players in the games were spitting images of some of the legends in college sports where they looked like, played like, and acted like the athlete and the athlete wasn’t seeing any of the profits. Signing the scholarship from the NCAA signs away all marketing rights. Student athletes are considered third parties to the official contract signed between the university and the NCAA. They are not considered a third party beneficiary of the contract because they are an incidental…

When beneficiaries named in an estate know they will receive a portion of the decedent’s property, they get anxious. In most common estates, beneficiaries are unaware of the following factors that determine the length of time it will take the executor to distribute property: • Executor responsibility – The priority for any executor is to pay the expenses and the taxes of the estate. Also, the executor must provide the probate court with an Inventory of Assets as depicted in the article…

mailing the distribution checks, the belligerent beneficiary delivered one last gripe. Furthermore, the belligerent beneficiary delivered the gripe to my attorney. While still on instruction to refuse direct contact from beneficiaries, the attorney referred the gripe to me. The attorney informed me by email that the belligerent beneficiary had the following complaints: 1) The beneficiary didn’t understand why the distribution happened early: that distributing early was against probate…

The demanding beneficiary is the most frustrating type of beneficiary an executor has to handle. A demanding beneficiary will abuse their rights as a beneficiary for the purpose of demanding more property than they are entitled to. As executor, I had to handle a demanding beneficiary which started with a wish list for personal possessions soon after the funeral. In the article The Mistake I Made in the First Few Days, I had mentioned that a beneficiary and others went to the second floor…