Beneficiary Audit Skill

The most important estate document most people have isn't their will — it's a form they filled out on day two of a job in 2016 and never saw again. Retirement accounts, life insurance, and payable-on-death accounts generally pass by designation, outside the will entirely: in the classic disaster, the will says everything to the new spouse, the 401k form still says the ex, and (jurisdiction-varying, but often) the form wins. This skill runs the audit: sweep every designation-carrying account, compare paper against intent, and flag the stale ones before they become someone's litigation.

What This Skill Produces

• The sweep list — every account type that carries designations, checked or marked unknown
• The comparison table — what the paperwork says vs. what the person actually intends, per account
• The red-flag list — ex-spouses, deceased primaries, missing contingents, minors named directly, "estate" as beneficiary — each with why it bites
• The update checklist — what to change where, and the confirm-in-writing step that closes the loop

Required Inputs

Ask for these if not provided:

• The account inventory — employer retirement plans (every past employer — the forgotten 401k with the forgotten designation is the classic), IRAs, life insurance (employer group + private), pensions, bank/brokerage POD/TOD registrations, HSAs
• The life since the forms — marriages, divorces, births, deaths, estrangements — each is a staleness trigger, and the audit walks them chronologically against the forms
• Actual current intent — who should get what, stated plainly; the audit is a diff, and the diff needs both sides
• Jurisdiction, loosely — some places auto-revoke ex-spouse designations, some don't, and federal-law plans (in the US) can override state rules — all flagged verify-locally; this skill finds the mismatches, a professional resolves the contested ones