Every life insurance contract includes a beneficiary clause making it possible to designate the person or persons who will receive the capital or the annuity from the contract after the death of the subscriber.
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 substitute beneficiaries who will replace the first named in the event that they renounce the gain or can no longer claim it.
Drafted at the time of subscription, this beneficiary clause may however prove to be obsolete over time, especially since life insurance is a long-term investment.
Why change it?
It is possible at any time to modify this clause: it is even recommended to reconsider it, for several reasons. Firstly because of a family change: birth of a child, death of the spouse, divorce, remarriage or rupture of PACS.
The patrimonial situation can also change (inheritance, gift, change of matrimonial regime) and justify a modification of the clause. Its applicability may also become obsolete with regard to changes in the law.
Finally, it may simply no longer be in line with the wishes of the subscriber.
Any clarification is helpful
Revising this clause makes it possible to more precisely designate the beneficiaries by indicating their names, dates and places of birth. Naming only their quality can be risky since it is assessed at the time of transmission.
Thus, the denomination “to my wife” will concern the person who will have this quality at the time of the subscriber’s death. These details will also be useful to the insurer when looking for the heirs and can avoid delays in payment. The drafting of the clause being entirely free, it is quite possible to designate beneficiaries jointly or successively (who will inherit by default).
It is also possible to provide for a distribution (50% to my wife, 25% to each of my children, etc.), and even to dismember the property between usufructuary and bare owner.
The only point of vigilance concerns the compulsory heirs. Even if the life insurance is not part of the estate, they can, since they are not beneficiaries of the contract, consider themselves injured, invoking the notion of “manifestly exaggerated premiums”.
