Simultaneous Death and Life Insurance Proceeds

Beneficiary designations are pretty clear in life insurance policies. Basically, if you have life insurance and you pass on, the proceeds from your policy go to your designated primary beneficiary. This could be your spouse, your child, or close friend, etc. But what happens if you, and your primary beneficiary, pass away at the same time? This may sound far-fetched, but it is definitely possible. For example, if you named your spouse as your beneficiary and you both wind up getting killed in a car accident. If both you and your beneficiary die at the same time, it can create problems. To avoid these difficulties, many states have adopted a law known as the Uniform Simultaneous Death Act. Under this Act, if there's no clear evidence of who died first – you or your beneficiary – then your life insurance policy is distributed as though you survived the beneficiary. This means...

14 May

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Simultaneous Death Provisions: The Law in the “DMV”

Posted by Bobby Feisee

in Bobby's Blog

In many estate plans, it is quite common for a husband to leave everything to his wife and kids. And, vice versa, a wife routinely decides to leave everything to her husband and kids. But what happens if both the husband and wife die simultaneously? Under the common law, if there was any evidence that one of the deceased individuals survived the other, even by a few seconds, then the estates would be distributed in that order. This led to many bitter inheritance battles in court. So, to address this problem, the Uniform Simultaneous Death Act was passed and applies to the “DMV” (i.e. District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia). The Act establishes that if two people die within 120 hours of one another, and there’s no will that expressly addresses this situation, each person is considered to have predeceased the other. This means an individual’s estate will pass down to...