Clear Money Guide
What this guide covers
A quick view of the questions and evidence developed below.
Updated July 28, 2026. Quick answer: The beneficiary designation controls. Retirement accounts pass outside the will entirely, so an ex-spouse named on a form from 1998 generally inherits regardless of what the will says.
Two documents, and the wrong one usually gets the attention
People spend money on a will and never look at the forms that actually govern their largest accounts. Retirement accounts, and often life insurance, pass by contract to whoever is named — the will does not reach them.
How this goes wrong
- A stale ex-spouse. The most common and most painful case. Divorce does not automatically remove a former spouse from every form, and state rules that purport to help do not always apply.
- A deceased beneficiary with no contingent. Often defaults to the estate — generally the worst outcome.
- A form lost in a custodian merger. If they cannot produce it, the account may default.
Ask every custodian to send you the beneficiary designation currently on file, in writing, and check that primary and contingent are named. This costs an afternoon and prevents the single most expensive category of estate error.
Do it after every life event
Marriage, divorce, a birth, a death, a job change, an account transfer. Any of those can leave a form out of date, and a rollover to a new custodian frequently starts with no beneficiary at all.
Sources
SECURE Act (2019); SECURE 2.0 (2022); final RMD regulations published 19 July 2024; IRC §401(a)(9); IRC §1014 (basis of property acquired from a decedent); IRC §664 (charitable remainder trusts). Cross-checked July 2026 against professional analyses from Kitces, Grant Thornton, Ascensus, Charles Schwab and Kiplinger. Indexed figures and state-specific rules are flagged rather than asserted.
This states what the cited authority says. It is not tax or legal advice, and beneficiary planning turns on family facts and state law that no page can see.
Related
Before cost, validity: what your state actually requires for a will to work — witness count, whether a notary is needed at all, and whether a handwritten or electronic will counts, with the statute cited on every cell.
Remarriage changes this by operation of law: a workplace plan pays your current spouse unless that spouse signs a witnessed consent — a prenup cannot do it, and a previous spouse’s consent does not carry over. Your IRA, meanwhile, still pays whoever is on the form.
If either spouse is not a US citizen, one default fails silently: there is no unlimited marital deduction for a non-citizen spouse — the statute denies it outright, and most plans are drafted assuming otherwise. Living abroad changes the benefits side too: Social Security usually follows you and Medicare never does.
The other half of the update job. Divorce revokes your former spouse from the will by statute in most states but does not reach an ERISA plan’s beneficiary form — which events change a will automatically, and which need a document.
The spousal-consent rule that shapes this for married participants does not apply to unmarried ones — naming an unmarried partner as beneficiary.
One designation mistake has a tax consequence as well as a probate one — naming your estate as the policy beneficiary guarantees the proceeds are counted in it.