Legal Question in Family Law in Louisiana

Hi, I have a question concerning life insurance & who to name as my beneficiary. I am an unmarried, 30 year old female with an 11 month old daughter. Ideally, of course I would want her to get every penny considering she is my only child & I have no spouse. But I have read there are many complications when naming a minor as your beneficiary, the first & most obvious being that if I designate the funds to a trust for her & she's still very young when I die, no one will be able to access the money until she turns 18 and can get it herself, and certainly if she is young I would want the funds to be available to whomever is raising her to help with those expenses. I would definitely want to leave her under the guardianship of her biological father, who has been very much involved in her life from day 1, and is an excellent father to her. So I considered naming him as my beneficiary, considering that he would be taking on the sole responsibility of raising our daughter in the event of my death, and I trust that he would do what's right with the money & use it wisely on our daughter. Here is my worry with that though, if he were to marry before I die, and then something happened to me & he received my life insurance benefits & took full guardianship of our daughter, would the new wife also have access to this money? Does she have legal rights to it because they are married? Even if the money was obviously intended for my daughter? Is there any way to make sure the funds go for the raising of my daughter in the event that I die while she is too young to receive them directly, without potential interference of outsiders that he (her father) may find himself legally bound to? I ask because I honestly do not know all the rules or legalities of marriage. I know my parents have been married for over 30 years & they each have access to every little thing of the other's, they act as though they are one person with two names & ssn's. I'm worried about some shiesty woman stealing all of my babies money from her father just because she can. How can I have him raise her but at the same time appropriate the benefits so that they were used how I intended?


Asked on 11/05/12, 10:24 pm

1 Answer from Attorneys
Nick Pizzolatto, Jr. Pizzolatto Law Office

You need to sit down with an attorney and talk about your concerns. To seek an answer here is not realistic because the answer to one question leads to another question. You are young and what makes you think you will not live until your child reaches 18? Another thing is how much money are you talking about? So, go to see a competent attorney in your area.

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Answered on 11/06/12, 3:14 pm


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