Life insurance: Remember to check your beneficiary clause in these specific cases

Is your life insurance beneficiary clause always adapted to your situation? Marriage, divorce, birth, death … So many events that may require updating it to ensure that your capital returns to good people. Here are the key moments when it is essential to check your contract.

Capital video: life insurance: you must not forget to change your beneficiary clause (1)

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To transmit a capital, life insurance remains a particularly effective savings product. One of the reasons why it remains the favorite placement of the French with nearly 2,000 billion euros in outstanding. As a reminder, when the contract subscriber, the payments made before his 70 years are entitled to a reduction of 152,500 euros for each beneficiary. It is only a time that a taxation outside the succession and lightened applies: from 20% to 700,000 euros transmitted, then from 31.25%, beyond.

Only here, so that the person of your choice benefits from these advantages, it is still necessary to designate him as the beneficiary of your capital to your death. For this, you must take care to write your beneficiary clause well. But above all, we think less, not to forget to Change it when necessary. “Arrival of children, marriage, divorce, remarriage, death of loved … These are all events of life that require verify that it is always good people who are designated by its beneficiary clause, and that the distribution between they are always the one we want“Confirms Nathalie Couzigou-Suhas, notary in Paris.

How should you qualify your spouse in the beneficiary clause?

Take some examples. At the start, all life insurance contracts have a standard clause, which designates “Your spouse, failing this, your children, failing this your heirs” as beneficiaries. If you are not married or Pacsé, it is for example recommended to switch to a nominative clause, to precisely designate your partner. Indeed, if you have children with the latter or the latter, and you suddenly die, your partner will not touch anything, because it was not your spouse.

Likewise, let’s imagine a man who marries and decides to modify the clause to designate his wife. In the event of a divorce thereafter, if the subscriber lives with another person at the time of his death, the latter will not receive anything, because the designated person will always be his ex-wife. In the event of a divorce, it is therefore better to name the person with whom you live if you are not remarried. If on the contrary the subscriber has a new wife, he will have to think about rewriting “my spouse” in the clause, which will allow the new spouse when the death is death …

Watch out for events in the life of your loved ones also

If these major life events must serve as a alarm to check your beneficiary clause, this must also be the case for events that affect your loved ones or designated persons. If you designate your children for example and one of them dies prematurely, his children (your grandchildren) will not become beneficiaries in his place. “Insurance law differs from inheritance tax. In this specific case, the capital intended for the deceased child will be postponed to his brothers and sisters only ”recalls Maître Couzigou-Suhas. So here you have to think about appointing grandchildren on the death of your child.

Likewise, you have to take into account, at the end of your life for example, which has already been transmitted during his lifetime. “If for example, we had appointed his spouse and his children and the latter were finally filled in donation, it is perhaps more his surviving spouse who will need capital at the end of life», Note Nathalie Couzigou-Suhas. In this case, there too, the modification of the beneficiary clause, or at least of the distribution, can be necessary.

However, one should not be taken from a frenzy of modification. It is for example advised, in a nominative clause, to indicate the address of the beneficiary. It is not necessary here to modify it with each move: “Even if the address changed at the time of death, the clause will not be zeroreassures Nathalie Couzigou-Suhas. Indicate at least one of the addresses that the person has had during their life can allow them to be easier to find them. ”