Legal Question in Insurance Law in Illinois

1) Normally the insurance company will pay the party listed as beneficary as of date of death. Since the insurance policy is a contract, that is one of their contractual obligations. If your goal is to make the change now, you'd have to ask the insurance company if they can do that and if they won't that's something you might want an attorney to try to get done.

2)? Not sure what you mean. But if you're wondering how the divorce decree interplays with the policy, that's a good one!!! There are several factors not stated, such as who owned the policy, you or your ex-. Yes, the other contracting party to the policy other than the insurance company was you or your ex-. Did he take the policy out or did you? Whoever owned the policy was therefore both the only one entitled to make the change and/or responsible to make the change, unless the policy granted that right to someone else (like you if he owned it, or him if you owned it - and we can't tell from your question whether the policy has that kind of privilege built into it so you may need someone to review the policy more thoroughly). And what was the intent after college? Based on the facts you gave us and what is not unusual in divorce proceedings, I'll assume the divorce decree imposed an obligation on your ex's part to pay for the children's college educations and the insurance policy was literally intended to guaranty that if he had died before they were through college, and therefore he was obligated to continue making premium payments and make them the beneficiaries. But how old were they at the time -- if they were minors most likely you'd have been charged with making sure the insurance proceeds would be used for them and maybe he trusted you to do so and didn't feel like he needed the make the change....? We don't know. But the problem here is that there is no statement of what the intent of the divorce decree was if he did survive to pay for their college educations -- for them still to get the money, or what. Again we don't know from what you've given us. If you helped with tuition...or the children took out student loans maybe the money can reimburse you all. Maybe there's something else in the decree that gives a clue as to what would happen to his estate (including life insurance policies) if he died and you survived him.... To me to be "irrevocable beneficiaries" seems a bit at odds with your statement that the children were to be covered "through college" and not beyond.

You should take the divorce decree including the entire marital settlement agreement that should be part of it, along with the policy, to either the attorney who assisted you then, or to another attorney now. And by the way, if you were divorced out of state there may be other factors based on the laws of the state where the marital settlement agreement was entered into in play.

Good luck!