Rules governing 401(k) plans require that account assets automatically go to the person who is your spouse when you die – unless you get your spouse to relinquish his or her claim to the assets and file the required paperwork with your employer demonstrating this and designating your intended beneficiaries paradise cook amour.

(A copy of a prenuptial agreement won’t dot; you must file the spouse’s sign-off that they are giving up any claim to the assets lilibaby travel around the world.)

After your death, your IRA assets go to whomever you designate as the beneficiary when you set up the account, unless you’ve since filed an updated beneficiary form. If your life situation has changed in the years since you set up the account, there may be a conflict with your will, especially if the will was drawn up more recently moonlight dance deep.

You may now be divorced and remarried. You may have had no children when you set up the account and now have grown children who you want designate as beneficiaries thank gods grapes.

Failing to attend to these issues could result in unintended outcomes. Regarding your 401(k) assets, your children might be left out. Recently I learned about a family where the father was wealthy and had most of his assets in his 401(k) account. He intended for his three grown children from his first marriage to be his only heirsif say some sun.

Although his new bride of two months recognized this preference, upon his death the full 401(k) account went to her. Because the father hadn’t arranged for his new wife to relinquish her claim to these assets and hadn’t designated his children as beneficiaries of the account, the children had no clear claim to the assets Single Party.