insurance inheritance
If a mother dies and leaves the insurance money to her husband, can her children make the stepfather give them any money?
<p>If a spouse dies and leaves insurance money to her husband of 32 years can the stepchildren make the stepfather give them some of the insurance money?</p>

<p>Who ever is listed as the beneficiary has the only rights to the percents indicated on the beneficiary sheet.</p>

<p>Some examples:</p>

<p>If her husband is listed as the primary beneficiary of 100% of the funds, then it's his.  (Secondary beneficiaries receive nothing if the primary is alive to receive the funds.)</p>

<p>If the primary beneficiaries indicate child A gets 30%, child B gets 30% and husband gets 40%, then it has to go to the beneficiaries as directed.</p>

<p>Request a copy of the beneficiary sheet to see who gets what.  And ask the agent or company who sold the mother the policy to explain it further if you need more information.</p>

<p>Sorry for your loss.  Please note, this is not legal advice.</p>

<p>Define leave.</p>
<p>2 possible ways:</p>
<ul>
<li>The husband is not a beneficiary on the insurance. Then the payout belongs to the dead mother, is part of her inheritance and laws apply.</li>
<li>The husband is named beneficiary. Then it was not the mothers money to start with, so nothing can be claimed back. And yes, you can name a 3rd party as beneficiary. Legally this is NOT an inheritance. If the payment into the life insurance where substantial, THAT would count as a donation and depending how many years back it happened it MAY be claimed back into the inheritance. This laws generally exist to avoid someone donating all his posessions on the death bed and leaving the heirs without anything. Statute of limitations apply, i.e. you may not be able to claim back a one off insurance payment done 15 years ago.</li>
</ul>

<p>The answer is "probably yes", but you have to investigate local law. Some countries, plus Louisiana, have a legal concept of "forced heirship", where some part of the estate must go to descendants in a legally specified way. Norway has <a href="http://www.norjus.no/visartikkel.asp?art=254" rel="nofollow noreferrer">such laws</a>; then it depends on whether there is or is not a will, and the spouse vs. children division gets complicated, but the main principle is that you cannot disinherit a spouse or children. However... there is a separate provision under <a href="https://www.finanstilsynet.no/globalassets/laws-and-regulations/laws/act-insurance-contracts.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">part B of the insurance contract act</a> to the effect that the benefit is not automatically "part of the estate", so you can specify a beneficiary, and that specification controls who receives the benefit. The closest one gets to forced heirship w.r.t. insurance benefits is that</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>If it seems clearly unfair towards a spouse or an heir of the body for
  whom the policyholder provided or was under duty to provide, and who
  would otherwise have been entitled to the sum insured under section
  15-1, that a beneficiary should receive the sum, the person provided
  for may request that the sum insured be paid wholly or in part to him
  or her. In the decision on this emphasis shall be given to the motive
  for the appointment, the needs of the person provided for and the
  beneficiary, and whether the person provided for had been given notice
  of the appointment in reasonable time before the death.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>If you are in Norway, are highly dependent on your mother's support, and giving the insurance benefit entirely to her spouse would leave you is financial straights, there could be a case for forced redistribution of the benefit.</p>

<p>The general rule is &quot;no&quot;. In other words, the stepchildren have no right to life insurance proceeds on the death of their mother that are paid to her husband per her beneficiary designation.</p>
<p>Two exceptions are listed in the other answers listed as #1 and #2 below, and there are at least eight other exceptions. All of these exceptions are narrow and it is likely that none of them apply in the OP case.</p>
<ol>
<li><strong>Husband Is Not A Beneficiary.</strong></li>
</ol>
<p>The husband isn't the beneficiary of the life insurance policy he isn't entitled to the proceeds for which he is not named as beneficiary, unless he is the contingent beneficiary under the default provisions of the life insurance contract, or under the wife's will, or under the laws of intestate succession in the state where wife is domiciled when she dies.</p>
<p>This can be determined with information from the life insurance company in most cases.</p>
<ol start="2">
<li><strong>Spousal Forced Heirship Laws.</strong></li>
</ol>
<p>Some jurisdictions require a minimum inheritance to a surviving spouse, but since he is a husband, this generally wouldn't invalidate a beneficiary designation under a life insurance policy to him. It might override default provisions of the life insurance policy or state law that otherwise apply, however.</p>
<ol start="3">
<li><strong>Insolvent Estates</strong></li>
</ol>
<p>In many jurisdictions, if the probate estate is insolvent, some or all of the funds needed to pay claims against the estate can be recovered from life insurance proceeds if the insurance policy was owned by the decedent (either out of the death benefit, or to the extent of the cash value of the policy immediately prior to death). Sometimes only certain debts (e.g. funeral expenses) may invade a non-probate transfer such as a life insurance benefit. Other jurisdictions exempt life insurance proceeds from claims against the probate estate.</p>
<ol start="4">
<li><strong>Contribution To Estate Tax Liability</strong></li>
</ol>
<p>The face value of insurance proceeds payable to a husband upon wife's death on account of a life insurance policy owned by the wife is included in the taxable estate of the wife for U.S. federal estate tax purposes. If the insurance proceeds and other assets of the wife and the gifts made by the wife during life (less deductions for charitable gifts, debts of the estate and the marital deduction) for which gift tax returns had to be filed exceeds her lifetime exclusion of gift and estate taxation (which is about $11.5 million), then estate taxes are due. If estate taxes are due, beneficiaries of non-probate transfers including life insurance proceeds that contribute to the estate tax liability must contribute their fair share to the estate tax liability of the probate estate of the decedent. This is also true in some state inheritance and estate tax laws and in the death taxes of some other jurisdictions.</p>
<p>In the case of a life insurance benefit payable to a widower, this contribution is zero dollars, if the widower is a U.S. citizen, because the marital deduction from gift and estate taxes means that the life insurance payment isn't increasing the estate tax liability of the wife's probate estate. But, if the widower is not a U.S. citizen, any amount received by the non-citizen spouse widower in excess of $159,000 (for decedents dying in the year 2021), does not benefit from the marital deduction, so he must participate in paying his fair share the estate tax liability of the probate estate of his deceased wife.</p>
<ol start="5">
<li><strong>Slayers.</strong></li>
</ol>
<p>In every jurisdiction in the U.S., a life insurance benefit is invalidated if the beneficiary killed the decedent unlawfully (subject to variations in edge cases of negligently caused deaths). Statutes that set forth this rule are called &quot;slayer statutes.&quot;</p>
<p>So, if the husband murdered his wife, his stepchildren could make a claim to the life insurance benefits otherwise payable to him, unless there is a different secondary beneficiary on the life insurance policy.</p>
<ol start="6">
<li><strong>Termination By Operation Of Law Upon Divorce.</strong></li>
</ol>
<p>In some jurisdictions in the U.S., a divorce, or in some cases even a legal separation or pending divorce case, terminates the right of a spouse to life insurance beneficiary status on policies in force when the decree of divorce (or legal separation) is entered (or in some cases when a divorce petition is filed and has not been dismissed). This does not apply to federal employee life insurance benefits, however. But, if the husband is still the husband at wife's death, this rule does not apply.</p>
<ol start="7">
<li><strong>Disclaimers.</strong></li>
</ol>
<p>A beneficiary of a life insurance policy, such as the husband in this case, can &quot;disclaim&quot; the benefit payable to him, which means he timely and legally refuses to accept it. When this happens, the benefit passes to the person who would have received it had he predeceased his wife. Often, this would be the stepchildren, although this depends upon who the contingent beneficiary of the life insurance policy is, something that is usually governed by the life insurance contract if not specified expressly by the owner of the life insurance policy when naming a beneficiary.</p>
<ol start="8">
<li><strong>Contractual Agreements And Divorce Decrees.</strong></li>
</ol>
<p>Sometimes a owner of a life insurance policy will agree to name someone as a beneficiary of the policy in a contract (e.g. a buy-sell agreement of a company that the wife is a part owner of), or is required to name certain beneficiaries of a life insurance policy in a divorce decree.</p>
<p>If a contract or divorce decree required the wife to name her children as beneficiaries of the life insurance policy, but she named the husband as the beneficiary anyway, it is likely that his stepchildren could sue him to pay over the death benefit he received as a result of his deceased wife's breach of contract or violation of a divorce decree to his stepchildren.</p>
<ol start="9">
<li><strong>Challenges To The Act Of Making A Beneficiary Designation.</strong></li>
</ol>
<p>If his stepchildren can prove that the beneficiary designation of the husband was a result of fraud or undue influence from the husband, or that the wife lacked the capacity to make a beneficiary designation due to dementia at the time it was purported executed, they could have a court set it aside.</p>
<ol start="10">
<li><strong>Statutes Giving Children A Forced Share.</strong></li>
</ol>
<p>Note also, that that a jurisdiction is not specified.</p>
<p>In the U.S., usually the only person to whom you must leave some sort of inheritance at death if you have any assets at death, is a surviving spouse.</p>
<p>But in some jurisdictions, such as many states in Mexico, children also have a right to a minimum share of an inheritance unless the decedent's estate can demonstrate that the children dishonored their parent during the parent's life.</p>
<p><strong>QUICK PRIMER ON LIFE INSURANCE POLICY TERMINOLOGY</strong></p>
<p>Every life insurance has three roles associated with it: the insured, the owner, and the beneficiary.</p>
<p>The <strong>insured</strong> in a life insurance policy is the person whose death triggers a payment of the face value of the life insurance policy.</p>
<p>The <strong>owner</strong> of a life insurance policy policy, who is usually also the person who pays the premiums on that life insurance policy, is the person with the power to determine who the beneficiary of the life insurance policy will be. In the case of a &quot;whole life&quot; life insurance policy, the owner may also access the cash value of the life insurance policy during the lifetime of the insured as an interest free loan against the death benefit of the life insurance policy.</p>
<p>The <strong>beneficiary</strong> (beneficiaries) of a life insurance policy is the person (persons) who received the face value of the life insurance policy upon the death of the insured. Sometimes a life insurance policy will have both primary beneficiaries who take the death benefit if they survive the insured, are not disqualified (e.g. due to homicide or divorce), and do not &quot;disclaim&quot; (i.e. refuse to accept) the death benefit. If the primary beneficiary does not survive the insured or is otherwise disqualified from receiving it or disclaims it, then contingent beneficiaries of the life insurance policy take some or all of the death benefit instead.</p>
