Since I worked for a couple of different life insurance companies for several years I thought I would just share some insight. The owner of the policy is the person who has the ability to change the beneficiary. Most of the time the owner is the insured, but sometimes not. Obviously someone else has to be the owner of life ins. policies for children because they cannot legally sign the paperwork. The beneficiary must have an interest in the person's life when the policy is first taken out. After that you can change the beneficiary to whoever you want. And JY could have taken out a policy on MY and made himself the owner and bene without her having any knowledge of the policy, or perhaps he forged her name on documents for an existing policy where she was the owner-not him. As her husband he does have an insurable interest in her life and this wouldn't raise any flags at the insurance company (except for now that she's deceased). If he forged her signature on an existing policy, the insurance company will compare a previous signature of hers they have on file (from the app or other bene change) to the latest bene change-if there was one before they pay. Or, they should, I used to do it all the time. I have had circumstances where it was obvious the signature was forged.
The money will not go to Cassidy's trust unless that specific trust was named as the bene and set up prior to MY's death. The trust has to be in existence before you can change the bene to that trust-does that make sense?? When a trust was named as bene, the company should ask for a copy of the trust to have one on file. Then, at the time of death, they ask for another copy of the trust along with any amendments to make sure nothing has been changed. If there are questions, the co. would contact the attorney who handled the trust. If there is a trust and JY is a trustee/successor trustee, then there's a motive right there. He would be able to get his hands on the money. If the trust was not in existence after MY's death, someone has to get the money to put it into the trust. I have a hard time believing JY would just give her trust a large sum of money like that if he wasn't forced to.
However, sometimes if circumstances are such that the insurance company cannot really determine who to pay the money to or if succession issues are very unclear, such as no bene, no estate or insured and bene die very close together and they cannot decide who died first, ins. companies will sometimes interplead the money. They go to the court and basically tell the court-you decide who to pay this to, and that's what we will do. This is done so that no one sues the insurance company because the issues are so murky.
Also, you can designate more than one person as primary bene and indicate what percentage you want to go to each person. This is how my ex-husband's life insurance is until our daughter reaches 18. It was written in our divorce decree that he maintain me as the bene for a certain amount until she reaches 18. I've paid claims before where there were actually 14 different benes. They were the person's grandchildren. I divided the proceeds by 14 and that's what they each received.
I hope this clears some of the questions up.
more likely than drugs, imo.
