Remember When You Named Your Girlfriend as a Beneficiary? He Didn't Either

https://www.williamhalaw.com/post/8/

by burritofanatic • 2 years ago

33 52 2 years ago

williamhalaw.com

andrewstuart3• 2 years ago

If I was on the receiving end of something like this I’d just give the money back.

playingalong• 2 years ago

back

To whom? The deceased person?

toast0• 2 years ago

The deceased person's estate, yeah. Often it's possible to simply disclaim an inheritance and you would therefore never receive the money; but sometimes that means it would go to your heirs.

With a $1M account, it's a lot easier to say you would return it than to actually do it though. That's life changing money and it's hard to say no to life changing money.

scotty793• 2 years ago

Yeah. To their "estate". It's mentioned that some of his assets that didn't have a beneficiary named landed there and I think they were to be split according to the will of the deceased.

Arnt• 2 years ago

To the estate, in which case the next beneficiary gets the ducats. After the ones that are named in the testament, the law specifies beneficiaries.

Joeboy• 2 years ago

To whoever legitimately won the inheritance lottery, I guess.

MissTake• 2 years ago

May not be that easy.

Sounds like “disclaiming” must take place within 9 months of death.

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/06/refuseinheritance.a...

rvba• 2 years ago

Many wouldnt though.

An statement by rich software developer does not extend to a significant part of a population.

ThunderSizzle• 2 years ago

Wealth doesn't breed morality. Morality is something that cuts across all wealth lines. Poor people aren't all criminals and rich people aren't all saints.

andrewstuart3• 2 years ago

If only I was rich. I'm not. As the other commenter says, doing the right thing isn't about money. Integrity is doing the right thing even when no-one is looking.

k__• 2 years ago

Don't know if I'd give away 1 million.

EnigmaFlare• 2 years ago

Easy to say when not only is it not happening to you but you haven't spent years engaging with the legal process and waiting for the estate to try and make sure you can't have it. The possibility of winning a jackpot would grow on you, you'd start to imagine what it would be like to keep it and the brothers, being your adversaries, would look less deserving than they do to an outsider.

andrewstuart3• 2 years ago

I suppose it depends.

If this person had intentionally done this to my benefit over their children and it was current then sure I'd take the money.

But if it's a 50 years old out of date commitment to a life long gone and there are other genuinely more deserving in terms of being actually children then yeah I'd give it to them.

I'd just see it as a kind of a bank error. If the bank drops 1 million bucks into your account what would you do? I'd give it back. There have been cases reported of this in Australia where people do spend the money that the bank inadvertently puts in their account - I find that hard to understand. Actually I find it easy to understand but disappointing that people are so willing to do the crime just because its offered to them easy. Not suggested that in the case of this will it would be a crime, just suggesting that there's a right thing to do.

And I have done stuff like that. About 30 years ago I got paid about $7,000 for a software job by a client then got paid a second time. I just called em up and gave it back.

krisoft• 2 years ago

but you haven't spent years engaging with the legal process and waiting for the estate to try and make sure you can't have it

I mean in the proposed alternative that wouldn't happen because you would tell them "hey I think this is a mistake, i think he just forgot to update the beneficiary". You only have the years of legal process where you decide that you should keep the money.

IshKebab• 2 years ago

I think I'd give some back. No way you'd really give $1m back though unless you really didn't need it (possible here). I would say morally nobody is really entitled to inheritance and they clearly don't need the money, so you're doing them a favour by giving it back.

aoila• 2 years ago

Really? I wouldn't. I'd consider it a generous gift from beyond the grave, and use it to help my own family.

ptero2• 2 years ago

TLDR: A person named a girlfriend as a retirement plan beneficiary. They later broke up, he had another girlfriend, they eventually also broke up, and 10 years after the second breakup he died single and childless.

His brothers want money to go to estate (brothers), but the beneficiary form trumped estate (as it should).

It is not clear from reading the post what the account owner wanted. It is possible he just didn't care who gets the money after he died.

The advice makes sense though -- if you want specific beneficiaries, name them on your accounts.

rkachowski• 2 years ago

I think its important to mention that he broke up with the ex in question in 1989, and died in 2015.

ptero2• 2 years ago

There are, IMO, many things that would be important to mention if we wanted to try to glean the account holder's real intent on the disposition of his retirement account.

For example, how long he had relationship with each girlfriend (he had broken up with the second a while ago, too; for all we know there may be others). What were his relationships with each brother and so on.

But such moral judgements are, to me, not the right way to go. The person had money, if he cared where it should have gone after his death he should have made a will or changed the beneficiary. We should not reject his existing instructions just because they were too old and assume he wanted something different on the basis of some moral judgements. My 2c.

jll29• 2 years ago

The article seems to imply we are sure this was all by mistake. I don't share this view.

If the deceased created an account for Murray (ex-girlfriend), and later removed Murray as the second beneficiary from another asset (but kept other ex-girlfriend Sjostedt on the same), then this may be what he intended.

As a single guy, providing part of your assets to two former partners (one might say common law wives, given they cohabited longer-term) that shared in your life or parts of it is reasonable, especially given that there are other assets that went to the brothers, so his funeral was covered and his next of kin can still enjoy the life insurance etc.

Maybe there is a case to be made for 1. not filling in beneficiary forms and 2. leaving behind a will (with a notary public) to remove ambiguity, especially when arrangements are unusual.

VagabundoP• 2 years ago

The difference is one required an annual update whereas the retirement fund didn’t require an update at all so easy to over look.

prawn• 2 years ago

Similar story: "AITA for not declining or signing over my portion of my ex bfs life insurance payout too his mom?"

https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/1d8rfzr/aita...

nuz• 2 years ago

The article seems to suggest that this is a bad thing. But what's the alternative? That it just gets soaked up by the bank or the state or whatever happens when there's no will? Better it go to a person even semi by mistake like in this case in my opinion

austhrow743• 2 years ago

People updating their wills is the good alternative they're advocating.

card_zero• 2 years ago

Life's too short.

threatofrain• 2 years ago

That might not avoid the problem here. Wills can be overridden by documents such as the one in the article.

averageRoyalty2• 2 years ago

Maybe he did consider this before he died and was happy with it? Anything beyond the black and white is wild speculation.

tossandthrow6• 2 years ago

It is super difficult to ask deceased people what they actually wanted.

In respect for the dead person, we absolutely have to carry out their will.

It might be there there is a brother somewhere that feels hurt. But we really don't know if the deceased one really wished that his early crush should have the money.

What we can do, however, is to make sure we update our wills.

bnegreve2• 2 years ago

In respect for the dead person, we absolutely have to carry out their will.

We trust judges when they decide to send people to prison for decades, so I don't see why we shouldn't trust them if they decide that this will is probably a mistake.

amanaplanacanal• 2 years ago

Judges rely on evidence when making decisions. Is there Any evidence that it is a mistake?

madebylaw• 2 years ago

There wasn’t a will. The guy wrote his GFs name in some form in 1989 and probably never thought about it again.

tossandthrow6• 2 years ago

We don't trust judges. We trust the process they follow. A judge is not a God, why we have a hierarchy to redo judgments (lift a decision to a higher court).

Also, IMHO judging a person for something they did not do is amongst the worst things that can happen in a society. This is also why there is a principle of rather letting 10 guilty people go free rather than convicting a single innocent person.

(i am speaking from a Scandinavian juris system)

nunez• 2 years ago

This is the entire basis behind the movie "I Care A Lot;" apparently, becoming the LPoA for lonely/forgotten folks on the brink of death and collecting their insurance payouts/assets is big business.

averageRoyalty2• 2 years ago

I don't understand the viewpoint many people have on these matters. I know someone who has been lying to her elderly mother (now deceased) for years stating she won't contest the will, which names her sister as the owner of the house which is now in a well-to-do area.

The funeral had only finished a day before when she started contesting it.

If I die from something with a few days warning, I'll transfer everything I can to a trust administered by someone I can trust whilst I'm still alive to remove this option. Although I'm sure that'll be contested too.

Just follow peoples wishes. You don't have to like them and you can speculate as much as you want, but what they put on paper is what goes. It's disrespectful and grubby to go chasing money that wasn't intended for you (or in theory may have been but you're not sure so you'd best grab it anyway, right?). Whoevers assets they were, they weren't yours.

Remember When You Named Your Girlfriend as a Beneficiary? He Didn't Either

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