Estranged husband life instance (family pocketing it)

[LooUpdate]

I separated from my husband about 3 years ago. We have 2 young children. Sadly he passed away in the spring.

He had life insurance through his employers. His family are "managing it". I've asked if I will have access to this money and they say no, it's not for daily living. They said they will spend it on things like the children's schooling and holidays. (That's great but daily living is surely even more important?) I even said I was willing to provide receipts to prove I was spending the money on the kids.

I am now the sole parent with 90% of the overnights (grandparents do the 10%). I never divorced my husband.

My question is: even if my husband has specified that he wanted his family to handle the life insurance money, do I have any rights to it as his wife (and mother to his children).

Talk to the trustees. Do they know you exist? Did he leave any provision for your dc? If he didn't they have a claim on his estate.

Did he leave a will?

www.citizensadvice.org.uk/family/death-and-wills/who-can-inherit-if-there-is-no-will-the-rules-of-intestacy/ because if there is no will and you are still legally married then you inherit under intestacy law in the UK

Contact his employers directly, make sure they know that you were still married

if there is no will and you are still legally married then you inherit under intestacy law in the UK

Life insurance is generally written in trust, which means it does not form part of the deceased's estate. How it is distributed is up to the trustees. The deceased's will and the intestacy rules are irrelevant as far as the life insurance is concerned. They may, of course, be very relevant regarding his estate.

If the life insurance has not yet paid out it may be worth contacting his employers and making them aware that you are still married as the previous poster suggests. If it has already been paid out to his family or to a trust fund administered by them, you don't have any rights as such. However, if it is a trust fund they must administer it in accordance with the trust deed.

Do you have details of the life insurance from when you were married?

Have you seen your husband’s will? If it had gone through probate it will be freely available.

What arrangements did you have regarding child maintenance etc before he died - are you in financial distress?

Dp has nearly always had a life insurance policy through companies he has worked for.

He had to nominate who the policy should be paid to and what amounts to be paid.

However we have never been married.

Unless he nominated his parents and asked them in his will to spend the money on treats for his children then I would look to see what exactly happened.

I don’t see how it is possible though if you are married as I would have thought the policy would have been paid directly to you and your children.

If its life insurance linked to a pension or pension rules, he may have filled in a nomination form at some point to say who the benefits should go to, but it will still be at the discretion of the scheme trustees. I would contact them to see what the position is as I'm pretty sure that his children would be first on the trustees list to benefit

You definitely need to chase this up op it sounds like the family have stolen the money you and your children are entitled......you need to get on this before they spend it all!

You need to contact them as soon as possible!! Phone and follow up letter ASAP!! There may be a pension as well. As he left dependants - they should be provided for and it is often up to the discretion of the trustees to change who payments go to.

Tell them you were married at the time he was deceased and that there are children.

Do it now!!

If the family spend it it may be very difficult to get it back!

When I took out life insurance with my employer I had to state who the beneficiaries would be.

Yes but it is also at the trustees discretion.
If there were children born after he filled in the nomination form then they may be given some consideration.

You need to check that who ever contacted his employer after his death wasn’t “economical with the truth”

Unless after your split he changed his nomination on his insurance policy I would be thinking there was something dodgy going in

At my work if you nominate someone other than your spouse to receive the death in service it does get paid to that other person. Did you get bereavement support payments?

Hope this gets sorted OP, even if your husband changed his nominated beneficiary his children would generally be considered by the Trustees.

It’s worth contacting his employers separately because he may have other benefits that are triggered if he dies while working for them, particularly if it’s a big company. If you’re young like your dh you may well not really think about them or tell your partner about them as you never think that you’re going to need them...

For example, dh’s Company and several others I have worked for have a payout if you die while employed that’s maybe 1x, 2x, 3x or ? of annual salary that’s in addition to life insurance. There’s also an annual amount per child that gets paid to the mother to help with living costs - think for dh it is until each child is 18 or leaves full time education. There may be more or he might not have had any of these but it’s really worth checking, particularly the one that pays money every year, which could really help to ease the pressure on you.

Regardless of what your dh’s will says (eg if he left it to his parents or the local cats home) I understand that if he has dependents and doesn’t leave anything for them then they have the right to go to court and get some assets to help.

Do you have legal insurance? (From your house or car insurance, bank account, your own work, union, even maybe your ex’s work etc). Definitely worth speaking to them (it’s free!) to find out what your rights are.

Do you know if he had a Will? If so - who the executor is and what’s happening? Or if there is no will - and he died intestate then that still leaves you as his next of kin as his wife and there are laws about how the estate should be split up. But it’s pretty shocking that your in laws have managed to get money before his own children, particularly if you’ve had no communication from his scheme.

How organised was your ex? Did you have a Will when you were together? Is he the sort that would have raced off to change it (and update work nomination forms etc) the moment you split or would he have put it on his list of jobs to do one day that would have taken him a while to get to. Particularly if it’s the latter you may find that if you both had wills that his would be the most recent he had so worth checking.

Sorry a post with lots of things for you to check on at a time when you are already incredibly busy but doing so could provide massive benefits to you and your dc.

And on a completely separate note, if your ILs are managing / controlling money that should be for your dc then I hope that they are going to provide accounts and receipts too. And not use money for holidays for themselves to take the dc on rather than you. As for schooling, start asking for uniform money, including shoes, whenever you need it - price it out in advance so you can say that you need xyz items at n cost for their schooling, likewise school trips, swimming lessons, school clubs or equipment etc. Then when they pay for those things you can point out that they are not helping with those things and it’s the day to day expenditure that needs helping with first before luxuries. Good luck!

You are your husband's next of kin. Why on earth did his family have access to the money?

In my work you can update your beneficiaries on the staff intranet, it’s an easy and quick thing to do, and usually employers who instruct the trustees are very careful about who they pay out to. But yes, I would certainly check. Hope it works out for you OP.

Also you might be able to do a bit of detective work and find the rules of the scheme online if he worked in the public sector.

Do you know anyone he used to work with, who you could contact and who could let you see the t&c or who could tell you about the benefits he was likely to have had? Or the name of his department so you could ring and ask to speak to his manager? Or even ring and ask to speak to him and see who they put you through to - they might help. Or ring and ask to speak to the HR department - there might be someone that deals with these sorts of cases or it might be dealt with by the person who dealt with him when he was alive. But there should certainly be people there who can help. If they give you the run around, resort to contacting the chief exec and say that you can’t believe his company would not give any life insurance payments to the young children of a recently deceased young member of staff - there (hopefully!) can’t be that many people in that position - that you think it’s indefensible and you can’t believe that they are such a bad employer to stoop so low... Would hopefully act as a rocket up their backside to sort this out properly!

I've been on both sides of this situation with family bereavements over the last decade or so.

My parents were estranged when my Dad died. My Mum was entitled to a full widow's pension from his 2 workplace pensions. She was also entitled to a slight upgrade on her state pension, owing to there being years where my Dad had paid NI and she had not. In pension terms, there is no such state as 'estranged' you are either married or not. The pension itself can form part of a divorce settlement, so this makes sense. I suggest you contact your late husband's employer and any other companies that he might have had pensions with.

Life insurance is a separate subject. It does not go automatically to the next of kin but to whom the trustees deem to be the most appropriate party. In practise, this will often mean that it goes to whoever the person nominated, or to the people named in their will. However, if there are financial dependents, as there seem to be in this case, then it is likely they will be the top candidates.

When another relative died, she left her estate to me and my siblings. She also survived by closer relatives, e.g. her own siblings and parent. The life insurance and unclaimed pension were both awarded to the people named in her will, e.g. me and my siblings. They did ask if there were other relatives and I obviously made sure to include full details of them. I don't think they they would have known otherwise though.

Have you seen his will, or his wishes about the money from the employer?

There seems to be a weird loophole with wills that they don’t get made public until probate is granted. If you have nice normal people sorting everything out and keeping everyone informed this isn’t a problem as they are allowed to show you the will beforehand if they want to.

However, if there is an issue (like obstructive in laws in this case!) they can just say not going to show you the will and they don’t have to. Then if the estate isn’t big enough to need probate it doesn’t seem to be that the wills get made public (if this isn’t the case I’d love to know as this is what we have been led to believe!).

If the person dies intestate there also doesn’t seem to be a way of getting involved once somebody has claimed to do it.

(A year on since unmarried - but with partner - fil died we still haven’t seen the will nor has it gone to probate. We know that the partner told the undertakers she was fil’s wife and they didn’t check - when we said that she wasn’t and that he had surviving dc they wouldn’t say anything for fear of breaching gdpr. She also instructed the solicitors not to talk to us despite us knowing that she was trying to change the will to put new executors in a couple of weeks before fil died, despite having dementia so not capable of doing so - and previously having appointed another dc as executor. Again, they have refused to speak to any of fil’s actual family due to gdpr despite protential problems and if it does come to probate then it will have been sorted and too late... sorry that was a bit long but just trying to show how tricky it can be but at least being actually married to him (as others have said the estrangement doesn’t count legally so don’t let his family tell you that you’re not his wife for inheritance purposes) and having dependent children you should be able to get some answers!