Serenity Financial

She Got the House… AND the Life Insurance Policy?

Life insurance is great for protecting your spouse… as long as it’s for your current one.
This Forbes article tells the story of Warren Hillman, a man with a life insurance policy, a wife, and an ex-wife.

Now, I don’t know if the former Mrs. Hillman “got the house” in her divorce from Warren, but she definitely got the life insurance policy payout! When Warren died from a rare form of leukemia, the entire amount of $124,558.03 was given to Judy, the former Mrs. Hillman. Warren’s widow Maretta got nothing.

Why? When Warren remarried, he never changed the beneficiary designation on his life insurance policy.

Maretta and Judy fought over that money in court for years. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court. And the justices ruled in Judy’s favor. She, the ex-wife, was entitled to the entire payout.

All that time and money wasted on legal battles could have been avoided by changing a name on a form! Speaking of which… When’s the last time you reviewed your own life insurance policy? After reading this, you may already be scrambling through your files to find it!

Let’s check up on your policy together. Contact us today, and we can get the ball rolling on:

Reviewing (or revising!) your list of beneficiaries.
Making sure you have the coverage you want.
Discussing the life insurance features you might have that you can use now.