Beneficiary
The person named to receive an account or policy directly, often overriding the will.
Named on a specific thing — a pension, a life insurance policy, sometimes an investment account — rather than in a will.
The detail almost everyone misses: in many countries a beneficiary designation overrides the will. You can leave everything to your current partner in a carefully drafted will, and the pension will still pay an ex-partner named on a form fifteen years ago, because that form governs that account.
This is one of the most common and most painful estate errors, and it costs nothing to prevent.
The routine: list every account and policy that allows a named beneficiary, check who is currently named, and update after every significant life change — marriage, separation, a birth, a death. Name a substitute where the form allows one.
There is a second advantage beyond accuracy. Money passing directly to a named beneficiary usually avoids the delay of estate administration entirely, arriving in weeks rather than months. For a household that has just lost an income, that difference is not administrative — it is whether the mortgage gets paid.
Words on this page
- Estate — Everything you own at the moment you die, before anything is distributed.
- Mortgage — A long-term loan secured against property — if you stop paying, the lender can take the house.
Related terms
Covered properly in Learn.
This term appears in the glossary of The Quiet Fortune, Volume III.