Legal Question in Wills and Trusts in Texas

Re: life insurance

Depends on whether the beneficiary was named before the divorce, or whether the divorce decree ordered that to remain in force. In any event, the insurance company should be notified immediately that there was a divorce, to keep them from paying it to the ex, because once it's paid, they can't be held liable if no one gave them notice beforehand.

Re: life insurance

It depends on if the policy was purchased during marriage, and also what the divorce decree says. If he bought it before divorce, and got ownership of the policy in his divorce decree, but just never got around to changing the beneficiary designation, then *maybe* you have a prayer. This kind of thing happens with some frequency. It happened to me when I was a child. Even though the law is not on your side, there are grounds here to try to get a court to make new law in this type of situation; the courts sometimes do that for clearly unjust situations. There is a presumption in the law of Wills that spouses named in a will who are divorced at the time of death, do not take anything under the will on the general principle that a divorcee would not want his/her property going to their ex-spouse. I'd argue the same sort of presumption should arise in the life insurance context. It's a long shot, but I think it's the only one you got.