Joint life insurance with XH, he's about to remarry, what happens next?

[Vole3]

We have been separated 5 years, divorced 3 and I have kept our joint life insurance policy going (I have always paid the premiums) to safeguard DS aged 8. The house is now in my sole name after remortgaging. What needs to be done to ensure, should the worst happen to XH, the money will come to me so I can pay off the mortgage on DS main residence?

I should add the policy is set to run for another 14 years, covering until DS leaves uni and maintenance is agreed until he leaves full time education.

When the financial settlement was implemented you should have looked at things like life policies and assessed whether they were still fit for purpose.

The policy most likely pays the death benefit to the survivor. That will mean that if he dies before you, you get the payment (which will hopefully compensate for the cessation of child support).

Similarly he'll get the money if you die first. That would compensate him for having to bring up your son without financial help from you.

Why though would you insure your life for his benefit? It doesn't make sense.

Speak to an IFA. You might be better off cancelling the policy and taking out a new policy, still insuring both lives, and paying to you (or your estate) the death benefit when the first of you dies.

His remarriage affects nothing.

Unfortunately due to age increase over 11 years (I'm now 45 and he's now 51 and still smoking) it would cost more to reinsure him alone than the joint policy costs. I have a separate for myself that pays out to DS and I think it's reasonable that XH gets a payout if I die leaving DS dependent.

It might be worth a phone call to see if you can change the beneficiary to DS rather than each other?

I must look at mine actually, I took it out specifically to pay off the mortgage but no idea if DH would get the payout if I died (the mortgage is in my name, DC inherit so they'd be liable for the mortgage, not DH).

If not probably best left if it's too expensive to change.

Your Ex can assign his rights under the policy to whoever he wishes. Ask him to assign it to your son.

When ExH and I divorced, I kept the life insurance policy and he transferred over full ownership of the policy to me as part of our settlement.

The Life Insurance documents then showed both our lives insured, but only me as the policyholder, so had I died first then it would have formed part of my estate and not gone to ExH at all. When it matured last summer, only I received the payment.

So your ExH needs to formally sign the policy over to you - contact your Insurance company to find out how to do that.