Every life insurance contract contains a beneficiary clause that allows you to designate the person or persons who will receive the principal or annuity from the contract after the subscriber’s death.
Insurers offer standard clauses corresponding to the most common heirs: the spouse or PACS partner and children born or to be born. There are also indemnifiers who will replace the former in the event that they renounce the winnings or can no longer claim it.
Drafted at the time of underwriting, however, this beneficiary clause may prove out of date over time, especially since life insurance is a long-term investment.
Why change it?
It is possible to change this clause at any time: it is even recommended to reconsider it for several reasons. Firstly, due to a family change: birth of a child, death of a spouse, divorce, remarriage or breach of PACS.
The property situation can also change (inheritance, gift, change of marriage arrangement) and justify a change of the clause. Its applicability may also become obsolete with respect to changes in the law.
Finally, it may simply no longer be in line with the subscriber’s wishes.
Any clarification is helpful
A revision of this clause makes it possible to more precisely designate the beneficiaries by specifying their names, dates and places of birth. It can be risky to name only their quality, as it is assessed at the time of transmission.
The designation “to my wife” will thus relate to the person who will have this property at the time of the subscriber’s death. This information will also be useful to the insurance company when they are looking for the heirs and can avoid delays in payment. The drafting of the clause is completely free and it is quite possible to designate beneficiaries jointly or successively (who will inherit by default).
It is also possible to arrange for a distribution (50% to my wife, 25% to each of my children, etc.), and even to divide the property between usufructuary and bare owner.
The only point of vigilance concerns the forced heirs. Even if the life insurance is not part of the estate, since they are not beneficiaries of the contract, they can consider themselves injured and invoke the concept of “manifestly excessive premiums”.
