How a Forgotten Form Led to His Ex Getting His $1 Million Retirement Account

WSJ Your Money Briefing

The Wall Street Journal

News, Business News

3.8 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 11 June 2024

⏱️ 8 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

They broke up 35 years ago. He left her his nearly $1 million retirement account. The years-long legal battle that ensued is a cautionary tale. WSJ personal finance reporter Ashlea Ebeling joins host J.R. Whalen to discuss how this happened and the mistakes to avoid when filling out beneficiary forms. Sign up for the WSJ's free Markets A.M. newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hey Prime members, did you know that you could be listening to this show
0:03.4	Ad Free on Amazon Music? With Amazon Music you get access to the most ad-free
0:08.8	top podcasts. Avoid the ads and start listening today.
0:16.0	Here's your money briefing for Tuesday, June 11th.
0:19.0	I'm J. R. Whelan for the Wall Street Journal.
0:28.0	You know that person you listed on your retirement account or life insurance policy to receive the money in case you die?
0:31.0	Make sure they're still your top choice. In some cases the beneficiary forms prevail
0:36.0	over a will even if they were filled out decades ago. This is kind of one of these
0:41.0	horror story cases. The man who died in 2015, he was just
0:44.8	59 single, no children. In 1987 he had listed his then live-in partner on his beneficiary form but they split up in 1989 and now
0:56.4	they've been fighting in court because his two brothers say that there's just no
1:00.2	way that he would have intended for this long ago X to get the money.
1:05.0	We'll talk to Wall Street Journal Personal Finance reporter Ashley Eblin, after the break. So how do we get AI right? Well, we need the right volume of data, the software to train it, and massive compute power, or...
1:29.0	Another one buys the dust.
1:31.0	Are you ready?
1:32.0	Hey, are you ready for this? Are you hanging on the edge of your... But with H.P.E. Green Lake, we get access to supercomputing to power AI at the scale we need, helping
1:40.5	generate better insights. Nice teamwork guys.
1:46.0	Search H.P. Green Lake. Not keeping up with who you've listed as beneficiaries on your retirement and financial accounts can result in a legal mess when you die.
2:04.0	Wall Street Journal reporter Ashley Eblin joins me.
2:07.0	Ashleya, when someone is listed as a beneficiary,
2:10.0	what does that entitle them to in the event of the account holder's death?
2:15.0	In most cases, that just basically means that the beneficiary gets the account when that person dies.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Wall Street Journal, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The Wall Street Journal and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.