A beneficiary designation warning

Photo: dhester/morguefile.com

Here’s a first-hand lesson on why it’s so important to check your beneficiary designations.  An elderly Little Egg Harbor woman received an email that said her IRA was set to go to a religious fellowship in California rather than her eight children. She didn’t make the change, she said, but had she died, her account would have gone to the wrong beneficiary and her heirs would have been left with a crazy legal fight.  In the end, we learned the investment company made a mistake when faced with a beneficiary change request for another investor who had a similar name and account number.

Read this Bamboozled column on NJ.com to learn  how to check up on your own beneficiary designations.