Legal Question in Wills and Trusts in South Carolina

Re: Challenging Life Insurance Beneficiary

I have mixed feelings about helping you, but ....

1) The insurance company has no flexibility to change the beneficiary. It would require a court order to them and that might not even be enough, especially if they were under threat from your fiance to pay the money they -- right now -- owe to him. Your fiance could demand it and they should pay him, the sooner the better for him to get it.

2) It sure sounds like they have a weak case on the marriage thing. Your fiance should see if he would be allowed to object in the court because an unopposed motion often goes through. I'm sure there's some serious risk of alienating an ex-fiance but it might be better than forever regretting saying nothing at the all-important time to speak up.

However, I have regrets helping you not only because your fiance's legal rights conflict with family harmony, but because, goddammit, think of the poor woman who bore his child and now has no husband and father to help her bring the child up. That may weigh in her favor in front of the court, even in spite of the evidence that the decedent wasn't really married, because she could eventually sue the estate for paternity. Even if brother had come to hate the mother of his child and wanted to dump her, which he did not, the court would justifiably grant the paternity.

However, the problem for her is that the insurance proceeds are simply not part of the estate. Gee, would it happen to be that those proceeds are the biggest part of his estate?

How much are each, the estate and the insurance policy?

They're going to have to move the court to go a long way to pull that money back into the estate. Phew! That's quite a stretch. NOW: If you find that they get the court to put a freeze on the money while it is decided what to do with it, don't be discouraged and don't think that means the money is lost. It does mean that you might have to fight this agressive lawyer to get to hold onto it. Whoever you hire, do so on a contingency basis, I think, and for less than the standard 1/3 that lawyers like to charge for contingency basis work.

What's your justification for fighting it? Your brother's wishes apparently. What's the justif