Checking your beneficiary forms

Free. Last updated 11 October 2026

Most people think of their will as the document that decides where their money goes. For a lot of the money most people actually have — a retirement plan at work, an IRA, life insurance, a bank account with a payable-on-death line — the will has no say at all. Each of those accounts has its own form, and the form decides.

Your will does not reach anything that has its own form

A beneficiary designation passes the account directly to the person named on it, outside the will. A will written in 2018 does not change a form signed in 2006, and nobody reads the two side by side unless you do.

The most common way this goes wrong is ordinary: someone marries, divorces or remarries, updates one form, and forgets the one that lives on a different website with a different password.

Make the list first

Before checking anything, write down every place money sits that could have a named beneficiary:

Retirement plans at work — 401(k), 403(b), pension. Usually managed on a separate website from your employer's benefits portal.
IRAs, including old 401(k)s rolled into one when you changed jobs.
Life insurance — through work and any policy of your own. The work policy often sits inside the benefits portal; your own sits with the insurer.
Bank and brokerage accounts with a payable-on-death or transfer-on-death line.

Then check each one where it is kept: log in, or call and ask what name is on file and when it was signed. When you change one, save or print the confirmation with the date on it, and keep it with your will. A dated confirmation is the only record you will have that the change happened, if the institution's records are ever questioned.

A 401(k) has a rule that protects a spouse

For a typical 401(k) plan, federal law says that when a married participant dies, the vested account is payable in full to the surviving spouse — unless the spouse has consented to someone else (26 U.S.C. §401(a)(11)). That consent has to be in writing, acknowledge what it does, and be witnessed by a notary public or a plan representative (§417(a)(2)).

So a form naming someone else, signed before the marriage, cannot by itself take a 401(k) away from a surviving spouse: the spouse's notarized consent has to be on file with the plan. A plan may require the couple to have been married for at least a year before the death (§401(a)(11)(D)).

This rule is narrower than people assume. It applies to plans like a 401(k). It does not apply to:

IRAs. There is no federal rule giving a spouse an IRA; the form decides.
Life insurance through work. Workplace plans under ERISA pay whoever is named. The Supreme Court held in 2001 that a state law automatically removing an ex-spouse at divorce does not reach these plans, and the ex-wife on the form was paid (Egelhoff v. Egelhoff, 532 U.S. 141).

Community property states add their own rules for spouses on top of this. If you live in one, ask the institution what it requires before assuming the form is the whole story.

Divorce does not reliably update anything

Some states automatically treat an ex-spouse as removed from a beneficiary form at divorce; when the Supreme Court looked in 2018 it counted 26 of them (Sveen v. Melin). But those laws do not reach workplace plans, and they do not help with a form signed after the divorce. The only change you can rely on is one you make yourself, on each form, with a confirmation.

If you are told someone else is on the form

If a plan tells you, as a spouse or family member, that another person is the beneficiary, ask for the plan's documents in writing rather than arguing on the phone:

Request the summary plan description, the plan document and the beneficiary designation on file. A participant or beneficiary is entitled to these on written request (29 U.S.C. §1024(b)(4)). If the administrator does not send them within 30 days, a court can order it to pay up to $110 a day (§1132(c)(1); 29 CFR 2575.502c-1).
Read what the plan says about a surviving spouse. The summary plan description usually states the spouse rule in a single paragraph.
File a written claim with what supports it — for a spouse, the death certificate and the marriage certificate.
Watch the clock. For retirement benefits, the plan must decide within a reasonable time and no later than 90 days, with one extension of up to 90 more. If it denies the claim, you have at least 60 days to appeal, and the appeal is generally decided within 60 days (29 CFR 2560.503-1).

When to check

After every marriage, divorce, birth and death in the family, and whenever you change jobs or roll a plan over. It takes minutes per account, and it is the one piece of estate planning that nobody else can do for you, because nobody else can see all your forms at once.

Where to read the primary sources

26 U.S.C. §401(a)(11) — payment to a surviving spouse, and the one-year marriage option.
26 U.S.C. §417(a)(2) — what a spouse's consent has to contain.
29 U.S.C. §1024(b)(4) — plan documents on written request.
29 U.S.C. §1132(c)(1) and 29 CFR 2575.502c-1 — the daily penalty.
29 CFR 2560.503-1 — claim and appeal deadlines.
Egelhoff v. Egelhoff (2001) and Sveen v. Melin (2018).

What this page is not

It is not legal or tax advice, and plans differ: read your own plan's summary description before relying on any general rule, including the ones above. What this page can do is tell you where your will stops and your forms begin, so that you check them while the person who signed them can still change them.

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