Do Beneficiary Designations Override Your Will After Marriage?

Does a Beneficiary Designation Override a Will? The Core Rule

The beneficiary form always wins for the account it covers. Assets with a named beneficiary are non-probate property. They transfer by contract between you and the financial institution, completely outside the probate process your will controls.

To understand why, it helps to see the line between probate and non-probate property:

• Probate property includes assets titled solely in your name with no beneficiary designation and no joint owner. Think of a car in your name, a checking account without a payable-on-death (POD) designation, or furniture. Your will governs these.
• Non-probate property includes 401(k)s, 403(b)s, traditional and Roth IRAs, life insurance policies, annuities, HSAs, POD bank accounts, and transfer-on-death (TOD) brokerage accounts. The beneficiary form governs these, and the will is irrelevant to them.

The scale of non-probate wealth is staggering. As of 2025, more than $49.1 trillion was held in U.S. retirement accounts and annuities, according to the Investment Company Institute. Not a dollar of it will ever pass through a will. The American Bar Association estimates that more than 60% of U.S. household wealth now moves through beneficiary-designated or jointly titled assets.

Here is the scenario that trips people up: your will says "I leave everything to my spouse." But your IRA beneficiary form, filled out years ago, still names your sibling. The IRA goes to your sibling. The will's instructions for that asset are never even consulted. The institution pulls the form, confirms the named beneficiary, and sends the funds.

IRA Beneficiary Rules for Spouses

IRAs do not carry the same automatic spousal protections that 401(k)s do. A spouse is not entitled to your IRA unless they are actually named on the beneficiary form.

IRAs are governed by the custodian's contract and Internal Revenue Code §408, not by ERISA. That distinction matters because it means there is no federal requirement to name your spouse and no requirement to get your spouse's consent before naming someone else. If you open a Roth IRA at 25 and name a parent as beneficiary, then get married at 30 and forget to update the form, your parent is the beneficiary. Your spouse has no automatic federal claim.

When a surviving spouse is named as the IRA beneficiary, they get a valuable option not available to other heirs: the spousal rollover. They can roll the inherited IRA into their own IRA, reset the required minimum distribution timeline based on their own age, and continue tax-deferred growth. Non-spouse beneficiaries generally must drain the account within 10 years under the SECURE Act.

There is one important caveat. In community-property states (Arizona, California, Idaho, Louisiana, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin), a spouse may have a legal claim to a portion of an IRA funded with community earnings during the marriage, even if they are not the named beneficiary. This is a point to confirm with a qualified estate planning attorney, because the interaction between community-property law and beneficiary designations varies by state.

401(k) Beneficiary Rules for Surviving Spouses

ERISA gives a surviving spouse strong automatic rights to a married participant's 401(k). In most cases, your spouse is the default beneficiary of your employer-sponsored retirement plan whether or not you name them on the form.

This protection comes from the Qualified Joint and Survivor Annuity (QJSA) framework, codified under 26 U.S.C. §417 and 29 U.S.C. §1055. Under these rules, a married participant who wants to name someone other than their spouse, such as children from a prior relationship, generally must obtain the spouse's written consent. That consent typically needs to be notarized or witnessed by a plan representative.

This is where the 401(k) and IRA rules diverge sharply. With an IRA, you can name anyone without spousal consent (outside community-property requirements). With a 401(k), federal law essentially locks in the spouse unless the spouse agrees in writing to step aside.

For blended families, this creates a planning tension. If you remarry and want your 401(k) to go to children from a previous marriage, your new spouse must sign a waiver. Without that waiver, the plan administrator is generally required to pay the surviving spouse, regardless of what the beneficiary form says.

Does a 401(k) Beneficiary Override a Will?

Yes. ERISA requires plan administrators to pay the person named on the beneficiary form, and federal law preempts any conflicting will, trust, state statute, or divorce decree.

Two Supreme Court cases make this unmistakably clear:

Egelhoff v. Egelhoff, 532 U.S. 141 (2001). David Egelhoff died in a car accident two months after his divorce. His ex-wife was still listed as beneficiary on his employer life insurance and pension plan. Washington State had a revocation-on-divorce statute designed to automatically void an ex-spouse's designation. His children from a prior marriage argued the state law should redirect the money to them. The Supreme Court ruled that ERISA preempts state revocation-on-divorce laws for employer-sponsored plans. The ex-spouse collected the proceeds. The children received nothing from those accounts.

Kennedy v. Plan Administrator for DuPont Savings and Investment Plan (2009). An ex-wife had explicitly waived her interest in her former husband's 401(k) as part of their divorce decree. But the ex-husband never removed her name from the beneficiary form before he died. The Court held unanimously that the plan administrator must follow the form on file, not the divorce agreement. The ex-spouse received the money.

For newly married couples, the practical risk is straightforward: if an old form names a prior spouse, a parent, or an ex-partner, that person collects the account balance, even if your will was updated last week. The form is the final word.

Which Accounts Pass by Will vs. by Beneficiary Form

This table shows which assets your will controls and which ones follow the beneficiary form.

The will only reaches assets in that last row. For most families, those assets represent a smaller share of total wealth than the beneficiary-designated accounts above them.

How to Update Beneficiary Designations After Marriage

Update every form within weeks of your wedding, not months. The designation on file is final the moment you die, and there is no grace period for newlyweds.

Your update checklist

1. Employer retirement plans (401(k), 403(b), 457, TSP). Log into your plan administrator's portal or request a paper form from HR. Your spouse is likely the automatic beneficiary already under ERISA, but confirm it in writing and name a contingent beneficiary.
2. Traditional and Roth IRAs. Contact each custodian (Fidelity, Vanguard, Schwab, etc.) and request the current beneficiary form. Name your spouse if that is your intent, and name a contingent beneficiary.
3. Life insurance policies (employer and private). Check both your employer group policy and any individual policies. Employer group life insurance is often governed by ERISA, so the same rules about the form winning apply.
4. Health Savings Account (HSA). Your HSA custodian has a beneficiary form. A surviving spouse named as beneficiary can treat the HSA as their own.
5. POD bank accounts and TOD brokerage accounts. Visit or call each bank and brokerage to update the POD or TOD registration.

Steps for each account

• Request the current beneficiary designation on file. Read it carefully. You may be surprised by who is listed.
• Complete a new form naming your desired primary beneficiary and at least one contingent beneficiary.
• Submit the form and get written confirmation that the change was processed. Do not assume a phone call or an online click was recorded. Keep a copy.

When to involve a professional

Some situations call for a qualified estate planning attorney or tax advisor:

• Blended families. If you or your spouse have children from a prior relationship and want to split assets between a spouse and children, the spousal waiver process for 401(k)s and the use of trusts as beneficiaries both need professional guidance.
• Large retirement balances. Tax consequences of inherited retirement accounts (including the SECURE Act's 10-year distribution rule for non-spouse beneficiaries) can be significant.
• Community-property states. The interaction between community-property law and IRA beneficiary designations is complex and state-specific.
• Trust as beneficiary. Naming a trust instead of an individual has tax and distribution implications that vary by account type. An attorney can help you avoid unintended acceleration of required distributions.

Getting married is one of the biggest financial transitions you will go through. Updating beneficiary forms is one of the easiest items on the list, and one of the most consequential to get right. A free guided planning tool like Blueprint from Neptune can help you organize the full set of financial and legal decisions that come with marriage, from beneficiary updates to tax filing status to name changes, so nothing falls through the cracks.