Most people assume that if they have a will, their estate is covered. Whatever they owe goes where the will says it goes.
That’s not how it works — and the gap between what people believe and how the law actually operates is where families get hurt.
Certain assets pass entirely outside of your will. Retirement accounts. Life insurance policies. Annuities. Bank accounts with a payable-on-death designation. Jointly held property with right of survivorship. Every one of these transfers based on a beneficiary form or account title — not your will.
It doesn’t matter what the will says. The form controls.
Which means if the form is wrong — outdated, blank, listing someone who’s already died —the will can’t save it. The asset either lands on the wrong person, or it falls back into your estate and goes through probate, which is exactly what those accounts were structured to avoid.
We’ve seen what happens when that goes wrong — including one account that ended up in probate when it never should have.
The fix isn’t complicated. It just requires looking at the whole picture, not just the will.
Every financial account. Every insurance policy. Every retirement plan. Every annuity. Every account with a transfer-on-death or payable-on-death designation. Each one needs a current primary beneficiary and a contingent beneficiary — someone who inherits if the primary can’t.
Estate planning that only looks at the will is estate planning with the windshield half-covered. The accounts and policies — the assets that pass outside of probate entirely —those are the other half of the picture. Both halves have to be current to work.
If you haven’t looked at your beneficiary designations recently, that’s where to start. Not as a formality. As the thing that determines whether your plan actually does what you built it to do.
If you’re not certain every account, policy, and designation in your plan is current — that’s worth finding out before it becomes someone else’s problem to sort out.
The Curran Law Firm handles estate planning and trust administration in Jupiter, Florida. We’ll look at the whole plan, not just the will.
Call 561-935-9763 to schedule your appointment
