Laws of Michigan on ex spouse getting life ins

by Guest » Sun Jun 15, 2014 10:38 am
Guest

I was married to my ex for 22 years. After our divorce we remained good friends and he called me about 2 years after divorce informing me he had left me as beneficiary to his group life ins plan. Being as I was added after the divorce in the state of Michigan will I be eligable to recieve his life ins? He remarried 7 months before he died but told me he had no plans to change his beneficiaries as his second wife had quite a bit of money.

Total Comments: 1

Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2014 03:22 pm Post Subject:

Michigan is not one of the nine community property states, so the general terms of ppolicyownership and beneficiary designations might apply -- a policyowner is free to name anyone or anything as his/her beneficiary. But under a group life policy, it is the insured employee who has the right to name and change beneficiaries.

Michigan, however, is one of a growing number of "minority rule" states that have chosen to automatically REVOKE a spouse as the beneficiary of a life insurance policy at the moment of a final order of divorce (Michigan did this in 1939, California did this in 2001). This absolutely applies to individual life insurance contracts. In such cases, unless the court orders a spouse to remain as beneficiary, the policyowner would have to affirmatively rename a person as beneficiary if that was his/her desire.

But it may not apply in your situation either because you also don't tell us the size of the company for whom your ex-husband worked, and ERISA -- federal law -- may govern the outcome if the employer had 50 or more employees. Under ERISA, it is the language of the Benefit Plan document (also referred to as a Summary Plan Description) that controls. And without knowing what that SPD says, there is no way to give you an answer today.

Many times, that SPD says something like, "Your current spouse will be the beneficiary of your life insurance. If you do not want your spouse to be your beneficiary, then your spouse must waive his/her entitlement in writing." But there is nothing to prevent it from also saying, "If you name your spouse as beneficiary and later divorce your spouse, that spouse will automatically be terminated as your beneficiary, and you should name a new beneficiary."

On the other hand, if this is a Federal Employees Group Life or Servicemembers Group Life policy, federal law clearly states that the last named beneficiary is the beneficiary. And the problem there many times is that the employee/servicemember forgets to update the beneficiary statement following a marriage or a divorce, and the money is paid to parents or an ex-spouse rather than the current spouse. Many young persons who enlist into the military are unmarried and name their parent(s) as beneficiary. They completely forget about this and when they later marry, many simply think the new spouse will automatically become the beneficiary. Tain't so, McGee.

Until we know more about the situation, there is not much else that can be said.

Add your comment

Image CAPTCHA
Enter the characters shown in the image.