Beneficiary Designations in Florida: What They Override, and What They Don’t

In Florida, a beneficiary designation overrides your will. The form on file with your bank, your insurer or your IRA custodian decides who receives the money: the institution never reads your will, it reads its own form, pays whoever is named on it, and closes the file.

That single fact is why an outdated beneficiary designation is the most common way a carefully drafted Florida estate plan fails. But “the form wins” is not the end of the analysis. Florida law limits beneficiary designations in five specific places — divorce, a surviving spouse’s elective share, homestead, minors, and a killer — and Florida law also protects designated assets from creditors far better than most people are told. This page covers all of it, with the statutes.

Does a beneficiary designation override a will in Florida?

Yes. A beneficiary designation is a contract between you and the financial institution. It takes effect the moment you die, by its own terms, and the asset never becomes part of your probate estate — so your will never reaches it. The Florida Supreme Court confirmed the point in Crawford v. Barker, 64 So. 3d 1246 (Fla. 2011); see also Luszcz v. Lavoie, 787 So. 2d 245 (Fla. 2d DCA 2001).

Your will governs what you owned in your individual name at death with no designation on it — §732.6005(2), read with the definition of “estate” in §731.201(14). Everything else passes by contract or by operation of law, and three separate bodies of law do that work — none of them the will:

• Bank accounts — the Florida Multiple-Party Deposit Account Act, §§655.78–655.82. A payable on death payee has no rights at all while you are alive (§655.82(2)); at your death the funds pass to the surviving POD beneficiaries (§655.82(3)). Nothing beyond the signature card is required.
• Securities — the Florida Uniform Transfer-on-Death Security Registration Act, §§711.50–711.512. A transfer on death registration is expressly nontestamentary and effective by contract (§711.509).
• Insurance, annuities and retirement plans — the policy or plan document itself.

The disinheritance trap. A client rewrites the will after a divorce, a death or a falling-out, and never touches the beneficiary forms. Six months of drafting is undone by a form signed in 1998 at a bank branch that no longer exists. Nothing on this page matters more than pulling your actual forms and reading who is on them.

Which Florida assets pass by beneficiary designation — and which cannot

Designations only work on assets that transfer by contract. Florida draws the line in a place that surprises people: you can name a beneficiary on almost any account, and on almost nothing else.

Can carry a beneficiary	Cannot
Life insurance policies	Florida real property — no transfer on death deed exists (see below)
401(k), 403(b), 457(b), SEP and SIMPLE plans	Homestead — and a designation on it is void where a spouse or minor child survives
Traditional IRAs and Roth IRAs	Motor vehicles — Florida has no TOD title statute
Annuities, including commercial annuities	Tangible personal property — jewelry, furniture, art
Bank accounts, by POD designation	Business interests, absent a buy-sell or operating agreement
Brokerage and mutual fund accounts, by TOD registration	Anything in your individual name with no form on file — that is what your will is for
HSAs and 529 plans	Timeshares and out-of-state real property
Florida Retirement System benefits (Chapter 121)	US savings bonds not registered in POD form

Digital assets are a fourth category with its own rulebook. Under the Florida Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, §740.003, the priority runs: an online tool designation inside the platform itself — a legacy contact, a beneficiary setting on a crypto exchange — beats a contrary direction in your will or trust, provided the tool lets you change it at any time. If there is no online tool, your will, trust or power of attorney controls. Either one beats the provider’s terms of service. Online tool, then will, then terms of service. Most people have never opened the online tool.

Can you name a beneficiary on Florida real estate?

No. Florida has never enacted a transfer on death deed or a beneficiary deed for real property, and has not adopted the Uniform Real Property Transfer on Death Act. If you have read about a TOD deed or a beneficiary deed, you were reading about another state.

The Florida instrument that produces the same result is the lady bird deed, or enhanced life estate deed: nothing transfers while you are alive, you keep full power to sell, mortgage or revoke, and the property passes at death outside probate with a stepped-up basis.

Homestead is stricter still. §732.4015(2)(b) treats a beneficiary or transfer on death designation on homestead as a devise, so the constitutional restriction in Article X, Section 4(c) applies in full:

The homestead shall not be subject to devise if the owner is survived by spouse or minor child, except the homestead may be devised to the owner’s spouse if there be no minor child.

Survived by a spouse or a minor child, you cannot leave the homestead by designation, by deed at death, or by will. Do it anyway and §732.401 takes over: a life estate to the surviving spouse with a vested remainder to the descendants, or the spouse’s election to take an undivided one-half interest as a tenant in common instead — an election that must be made within six months of the death and is irrevocable once made. Ballard v. Pritchard, 332 So. 3d 570 (Fla. 2d DCA 2021).

The same applies to your car. Florida has no motor vehicle transfer on death statute. A vehicle passes at death by the affidavit process under §319.28 or through administration — there is no beneficiary line on a Florida title. See transferring a vehicle after death.

Are assets that pass by beneficiary designation protected from creditors?

In Florida, yes — and better than almost anything else you own. This is the single most misreported point in Florida estate planning, and getting it backwards leads people to the wrong instrument.

Asset	Protection	Authority
Life insurance proceeds payable to a named beneficiary	Inure exclusively to that person and are exempt from the claims of creditors of the insured	§222.13(1)
Cash surrender value and annuity proceeds	Exempt from creditors of the annuitant and of the beneficiary	§222.14
IRAs and qualified plans	Exempt from all creditor claims	§222.21(2)(a)
Inherited IRAs	Still exempt after the owner’s death — a Florida-specific protection	§222.21(2)(c)
Life insurance payable to your estate	Becomes an estate asset and loses the exemption	§222.13(1)
Assets in your revocable living trust	No protection from your own creditors, spendthrift clause or not	§736.0505(1)(a)

The inherited IRA row is a genuine Florida advantage. In Clark v. Rameker, 573 U.S. 122 (2014) the U.S. Supreme Court held that inherited IRAs are not “retirement funds” and get no federal bankruptcy exemption. Florida legislated around it — §222.21(2)(c) exempts them under state law, remedially and retroactively. Two caveats: the exemption depends on the account keeping its tax-qualified status, so a prohibited transaction can forfeit it (In re Yerian, 927 F.3d 1223 (11th Cir. 2019)), and an IRA paid to an estate is not an inherited IRA at all.

This is the real reason never to name your estate as beneficiary. Everyone says it forces the asset into probate, which is true and mild. The statutory consequence is worse: proceeds payable to your estate become estate assets and lose the §222.13 exemption outright. Naming your estate does not just slow the money down. It hands it to your creditors, then subjects it to the claim deadlines in §733.702 and the two-year bar in §733.710.

The corollary about revocable trusts. A revocable living trust is an excellent probate-avoidance and control instrument. It is not an asset protection instrument for you. §736.0505(1)(a) says it in terms — “whether or not the terms of a trust contain a spendthrift provision,” a revocable trust’s property is reachable by your creditors during your lifetime. After death, §736.05053 requires the trustee to pay the personal representative whatever the estate cannot cover. Spendthrift protection under §736.0502 runs to the people you leave assets to — not to you.

You got divorced. Who actually gets the money?

It depends on whether the account is governed by Florida law or by federal law, and the answer flips between two accounts holding identical money.

Under §732.703, a designation naming your spouse, made before the marriage ended, is void as of the judgment — the ex-spouse is treated as having predeceased you. It reaches life insurance, qualified annuities, employee benefit plans, IRAs, POD accounts and TOD securities, for anyone dying on or after 1 July 2012. The U.S. Supreme Court confirmed that statutes like it are constitutional even as applied to designations signed years earlier: Sveen v. Melin, 584 U.S. 811 (2018).

Then federal law takes a large bite out of it. ERISA preempts state revocation-on-divorce statutes as applied to employer plan benefits — Egelhoff v. Egelhoff, 532 U.S. 141 (2001) — and the plan administrator pays whoever the plan document names, full stop, even where a divorce decree says otherwise: Kennedy v. Plan Administrator for DuPont, 555 U.S. 285 (2009). §732.703(4)(a) yields to controlling federal law expressly. An IRA is not an ERISA plan, so §732.703 does reach it.

Your 401(k) still pays your ex-spouse. Your rollover IRA does not. Same money, same divorce, opposite results.

§732.703(4) contains ten exceptions in all, and three of them matter to ordinary people:

• Florida Retirement System benefits are excluded. Chapter 121 plans are carved out by name. Every Florida teacher, firefighter, police officer, and state or county employee should read their FRS designation as if §732.703 did not exist — because as to that account, it does not.
• A designation signed after the divorce that expressly names your former spouse stands. §732.703(4)(b) is narrow on this: the governing instrument must be signed after the dissolution and must expressly provide that benefits go to the former spouse. A general provision buried in a marital settlement or postnuptial agreement does not do it.
• A divorce order requiring you to keep the coverage in place controls, as do irrevocable designations, instruments governed by another state’s law, joint tenancy survivorship assets, and remarriage to the same person.

None of which substitutes for the obvious step. File a new change of beneficiary form the week the judgment is entered. Relying on a statute with ten exceptions, half of them litigated after you are gone, is not a plan.

Does your spouse have to consent — and can a designation cut a spouse out?

Sometimes yes, and no. Three different rules apply depending on the account, and each one has caught a Florida family that thought a form was the end of the discussion.

Your 401(k) needs your spouse’s signature. Your IRA does not.

Under ERISA, 29 U.S.C. §1055 and I.R.C. §417, a married participant in a qualified plan cannot name anyone other than the spouse as beneficiary unless the spouse consents — in writing, naming the specific beneficiary, acknowledging the effect, and witnessed by a plan representative or a notary. There is no equivalent federal rule for IRAs. Roll a 401(k) into an IRA and that protection quietly disappears with it.

The elective share reaches designated assets

A surviving spouse in Florida may elect 30% of the elective estate — §732.201 creates the right, §732.2065 sets the percentage. And the “elective estate” under §732.2035 is deliberately broad. It includes:

• POD, TOD and “in trust for” accounts — §732.2035(3)
• Joint tenancy with right of survivorship and tenancy by the entireties — §732.2035(4)
• The net cash surrender value of life insurance on your life — §732.2035(7)
• Anything payable under a pension, retirement or deferred compensation plan by reason of surviving you — §732.2035(8)
• Your revocable trust, your homestead, and transfers made within one year of death

Then §732.2075 sets the order in which recipients contribute and §732.2085 makes them personally liable. A beneficiary designation does not defeat the elective share. The person you named can be ordered to write a check.

A joint account with your spouse is probably not yours to designate alone

Under §655.79(1), a deposit account in the names of two married people is presumed held as a tenancy by the entireties unless the paperwork says otherwise — rebuttable only by fraud, undue influence, or clear and convincing proof of contrary intent. Beal Bank, SSB v. Almand & Associates, 780 So. 2d 45 (Fla. 2001).

That protection just got broader. In Loumpos v. Bank One, No. SC2024-1256 (Fla. Dec. 11, 2025), the Florida Supreme Court held that §655.79(1) does not require the common-law unities of time and title — so an account one spouse opened alone becomes entireties property once both spouses are named on it. The Court quashed the Second District’s contrary decision and approved Versace v. Uruven, LLC, 348 So. 3d 610 (Fla. 4th DCA 2022).

Neither spouse can sever an entireties tenancy alone. So a POD naming a third party on a spousal account collides with a form of ownership that outranks it — and after Loumpos, more Florida accounts are entireties accounts than most people assume, including ones that started in a single name.

What happens if your beneficiary dies before you?

Probably not what you assume, and Florida will not fix it for you. Most custodial forms distribute per capita among the surviving primary beneficiaries by default. Name three children, one dies before you, and that child’s share goes to the two surviving siblings — not to that child’s own children.

Nothing in Florida law reverses that. The antilapse statute, §732.603, saves a lapsed gift in a will and in a power of appointment; §736.1106 does the same inside a trust. Neither reaches a life insurance form or an IRA form. A non-probate designation that lapses simply lapses.

The fix is two words, written on the form: per stirpes. It directs a deceased beneficiary’s share down that person’s own line, to the grandchildren. Most custodians accept it; a few require their own supplemental form. Ask.

The other half of the answer is naming a contingent beneficiary at all. If your primary dies first and no contingent is listed, the asset defaults into your estate — and everything in the creditor section above happens to it. (A fuller treatment of backup beneficiaries lives on contingent beneficiaries under Florida estate law.)

One Florida quirk worth knowing. Many national articles say a beneficiary must survive you by 120 hours. Florida imposes no survival period. §732.601 applies only where there is not enough evidence to establish who died first — and where an insured and a beneficiary die together, the proceeds are distributed as if the insured survived. If you want a survival requirement, it has to come from the contract, not the statute.

What happens if you never name a beneficiary?

Something still happens — you just do not get to choose what, and the answer is different for every account. A blank beneficiary line does not mean the money goes to your next of kin. It means a default rule takes over, and the default rules do not match each other.

• A 401(k) or other ERISA plan. Your surviving spouse takes it by force of federal law — that is the whole point of the 29 U.S.C. §1055 consent rule. Unmarried, and the plan document’s default order applies.
• An IRA. The custodial agreement decides, and custodians differ. Some default to the surviving spouse, then children; many default straight to the estate — which is the worst outcome, for the reasons in the creditor section above. Two custodians, identical facts, different results. This is worth ten minutes and a phone call.
• A POD or TOD account. With no surviving payee, the funds fall into the probate estate.
• A life insurance policy. The policy’s own default schedule applies — typically spouse, then children, then the estate.

Note what is not on that list: “next of kin” has no legal force against a beneficiary form. Being the closest living relative gives you no claim to an account someone else is named on, and no standing to redirect one that names nobody. The paperwork decides, and where the paperwork is silent the default rule decides — not the family tree.

Can you name a minor child as a beneficiary in Florida?

You can, and above $15,000 it triggers a court proceeding you did not want. A minor cannot give a valid receipt for money. Under §744.301(2), a natural guardian may collect, hold and manage amounts totalling up to $15,000 for a child — expressly including life insurance and annuity proceeds and benefit plan proceeds — with no court appointment, no authority and no bond. §744.387 applies the same threshold to settlements.

Above $15,000 a guardian of the property must be appointed: a public court file, annual accountings, a bond and a lawyer — ending the day the child turns 18, when whatever is left is handed over in a single cheque. There are two better answers, and one of them is free.

Approach	How	Best for
FUTMA custodian on the form itself	§710.104 expressly allows you to nominate a custodian in a writing designating a beneficiary of contractual rights, including benefit plans; §710.111 covers insurance and annuities. Write: “[Name], as custodian for [Child] under the Florida Uniform Transfers to Minors Act.”	Modest sums. Costs nothing, needs no trust, no guardianship, and defers the payout past 18
A trust as the named beneficiary	Name the trust, not the child. Your successor trustee manages the money and distributes on the terms you set — tuition, a first home, staged ages	Larger sums, blended families, and any child you would not hand a lump sum at 18

Naming a trust, a special needs trust, or a charity

A trust as beneficiary

Naming your revocable trust routes the money through your own instructions instead of paying it out flat, and supplies the one protection a direct designation cannot: a spendthrift provision under §736.0502, which shields the inheritance from a beneficiary’s creditors and their divorce. For retirement accounts, conduit versus accumulation drafting changes the tax result substantially — a drafting conversation, not a form.

A beneficiary who receives government benefits

An outright payment can end the benefits paying for their care — SSI applies a $2,000 countable asset limit and Medicaid turns on similar tests. Naming a third-party special needs trust instead is long settled, authorised at 42 U.S.C. §1396p(c)(2)(B)(iii), and a Florida trustee may appoint assets into a supplemental needs trust under §736.04117. See Florida special needs trusts.

A charity

If you intend to leave something to charity, leave the IRA and leave the family the other assets. A traditional IRA is income in respect of a decedent under I.R.C. §691 — a child pays ordinary income tax on every dollar withdrawn, now compressed into ten years. A tax-exempt charity pays nothing and receives the account whole.

Two things this does not do. It gives you no income tax deduction during your lifetime, because a revocable designation is not a completed gift. And the same logic does not transfer to life insurance, which is already income-tax-free to any beneficiary under I.R.C. §101(a) — so there is no comparable advantage to redirecting a policy. More on structuring gifts by will: charitable bequests in Florida.

Inherited IRAs and the 10-year rule

Most non-spouse beneficiaries must empty an inherited retirement account within ten years. That rule came from the SECURE Act of 2019 — not SECURE 2.0, which changed required beginning ages and Roth rules but left this alone.

The part that is current, and that most pages have not caught up with: under final Treasury regulations issued in July 2024, where the account owner died on or after their required beginning date, the beneficiary must take annual required minimum distributions in years one through nine and still empty the account by the end of year ten. Those annual distributions apply to distribution calendar years beginning on or after 1 January 2025.

Five categories of eligible designated beneficiary escape the ten-year compression:

• a surviving spouse
• a minor child of the account owner — not a grandchild, and the exception ends at majority
• a beneficiary who is disabled
• a beneficiary who is chronically ill
• a beneficiary not more than ten years younger than the owner — often a sibling or a partner

Which category your beneficiary falls into determines whether a designation is enough or whether the account needs a trust behind it. It is the single most consequential retirement question on this page, and it is answered on a form most people fill in from a phone.

What tax will your beneficiary actually pay?

It depends entirely on which asset you left them, and the spread runs from nothing to ordinary income on every dollar. Florida charges no inheritance tax, so this is a federal income tax question — and it is the one most people get wrong when they decide which asset goes to which person.

What they inherit	What they owe
Life insurance death benefit	Nothing. Income-tax-free under I.R.C. §101(a), whoever receives it
Traditional IRA or 401(k)	Ordinary income on every dollar withdrawn. It is income in respect of a decedent under I.R.C. §691 — and the ten-year rule now compresses it into a decade, often stacking it on the beneficiary’s peak earning years
Roth IRA	Nothing, provided the account met the five-year holding requirement. Distributions are still required, but they come out tax-free
POD bank account	The balance is not income — it is a transfer. Interest credited after the death is income to whoever receives it
Annuity	The gain above the owner’s investment is taxable as income in respect of a decedent; the return of principal is not
Appreciated stock in a TOD account	No income tax on receipt, and the basis is stepped up to date-of-death value under I.R.C. §1014 — so the built-in gain disappears

Two consequences worth acting on. If you are leaving something to charity, leave the IRA — a tax-exempt charity takes it whole while a child pays ordinary income on all of it. And if you are dividing an estate between children, equal dollar amounts are not equal after tax: $300,000 of life insurance and $300,000 of traditional IRA are worth materially different sums to the two people receiving them.

None of this is Florida death tax, because there is none — see Florida inheritance tax and estate tax for that question in full.

Can a beneficiary designation be challenged in Florida?

Yes — and the grounds are narrower and more technical than a will contest. No probate court supervises the transfer, so the fight usually starts with the insurer or custodian filing an interpleader and depositing the money with the court while the claimants litigate. Four routes:

• Undue influence. Where a substantial beneficiary occupied a confidential relationship with the decedent and actively procured the change, a rebuttable presumption of undue influence arises and the burden shifts — In re Estate of Carpenter, 253 So. 2d 697 (Fla. 1971), whose seven active-procurement factors remain the framework, codified as a burden-shifting presumption at §733.107(2). A last-minute change in favour of a new caregiver is the classic fact pattern.
• Lack of capacity at the moment the form was signed — a question about that day, not about the diagnosis generally.
• Fraud, duress or forgery. §732.5165 voids an instrument procured by fraud, duress, mistake or undue influence.
• The change never took effect. Florida decisions have applied a strict compliance standard to an attempted change of life insurance beneficiary — Brown v. Di Petta, 448 So. 2d 561 (Fla. 3d DCA 1984); McDaniel v. Liberty National Life Insurance Co., 722 So. 2d 865 (Fla. 5th DCA 1998). He filled out the form and never sent it in is a complete case, and the outcome is often that the old beneficiary keeps the money.

What if the beneficiary caused the death?

Florida’s slayer statute, §732.802, reaches far beyond wills. §732.802(3) disqualifies a named beneficiary under a “bond, life insurance policy, or other contractual arrangement” — broad enough to cover annuities, IRAs, 401(k)s and POD and TOD accounts — and §732.802(2) covers joint and survivorship property. The killer is treated as having predeceased. A final murder conviction is conclusive; without one, a court may decide the question by the greater weight of the evidence, which is why a criminal acquittal does not end the civil claim.

The deadline nobody mentions. The insurer or bank is protected if it pays out before receiving written notice at its home office. Miss that step and you are no longer making a claim against a company — you are chasing an individual who has already spent the money. If a slayer claim is even possible, written notice goes out the same day.

How the money actually gets paid

The process is deliberately simple, which is most of the appeal.

1. Notify the institution. The named beneficiary contacts the insurer, custodian or bank directly. No lawyer, no court, no letters of administration.
2. Submit a claim form and a certified death certificate. Each institution has its own; some require an original certified copy.
3. The institution verifies its own records — the designation on file, contingent beneficiaries, and any competing claim.
4. Payment issues, typically in two to four weeks, against a probate administration measured in months.

That speed is the practical reason to keep a POD account alongside everything else — it gives the family cash for a funeral and the first months of bills while the estate is still opening.

It goes wrong in three ways: no beneficiary named, every beneficiary predeceased, or the estate named. In each case the asset falls back into the probate estate with its liabilities and its clocks — the claim window in §733.702 and the two-year bar in §733.710. Whether that means summary administration or formal turns on size: effective 1 July 2026, §735.201 raised the summary administration ceiling to $150,000 in assets less exempt property, up from $75,000, with a separate route for a death more than two years ago at any value.

Florida imposes no estate tax and no inheritance tax. Article VII, Section 5 of the Florida Constitution caps any Florida death tax at the amount creditable against the federal tax, and Chapter 198 is a pure “sponge” tax pegged to a federal credit that was repealed and replaced with a deduction in 2005. Florida has collected no estate tax since 2004. Federal estate tax reaches only estates above the basic exclusion — $15 million per person in 2026. For the overwhelming majority of Florida families the question is not tax. It is whose name is on the form. (The death-tax question in full: Florida inheritance tax and estate tax.)

Who you should never name as a beneficiary

Five answers, each of which produces a predictable and avoidable mess:

Do not name	Why	Instead
Your estate	Forfeits the §222.13 creditor exemption, forces probate, exposes the money to claims	A person, or your trust
A minor child, above $15,000	Forces a guardianship of the property; pays out in full at 18	A FUTMA custodian on the form, or a trust
A person on SSI or Medicaid	Can end the benefits that pay for their care	A third-party special needs trust
A person with creditors, an addiction, or an unstable marriage	The money arrives outright, with no protection	A trust with a spendthrift provision
“My children,” with no per stirpes and no contingent	A deceased child’s branch is disinherited by default	Name them, add per stirpes, add contingents

A beneficiary review you can do this week

1. List every account that can carry a designation — every policy, every retirement plan from every former employer, every bank and brokerage account, HSAs and 529s included.
2. Ask each institution who is actually on file. Not what you remember. What their record says. This is where the surprises are.
3. Check for a contingent beneficiary on every one. A blank contingent line is the most common defect in Florida estate plans.
4. Decide per stirpes or per capita, in writing, and confirm the custodian recorded it.
5. Reconcile the forms against your will and trust. Where they disagree, the form wins — so the form is what has to change.
6. Re-check after every life event — marriage, divorce, birth, death, a rollover, a new job. A 401(k) rolled into an IRA carries no beneficiary and no spousal consent rule with it.

Frequently asked questions

Does a beneficiary designation override a will in Florida?

Yes. A beneficiary designation is a contract with the financial institution and takes effect at death by its own terms, so the asset never enters the probate estate the will governs. The Florida Supreme Court confirmed this in Crawford v. Barker, 64 So. 3d 1246 (Fla. 2011). Your will controls only what you owned individually with no designation on it.

Does Florida have a transfer on death deed for real estate?

No. Florida has not enacted a transfer on death deed or beneficiary deed and has not adopted the Uniform Real Property Transfer on Death Act. The Florida instrument that achieves the same result is the lady bird deed, or enhanced life estate deed, which passes property at death outside probate while leaving you free to sell, mortgage or revoke during your lifetime.

Are life insurance proceeds protected from creditors in Florida?

Yes, when payable to a named beneficiary. Under §222.13(1) the proceeds inure exclusively to that person and are exempt from the claims of the insured’s creditors; annuity proceeds are exempt under §222.14 from creditors of both the annuitant and the beneficiary; and §222.21(2)(c) exempts inherited IRAs as a matter of Florida law even though Clark v. Rameker, 573 U.S. 122 (2014) denied the federal bankruptcy exemption. But if the policy names your estate, the proceeds become estate assets and lose the exemption.

My divorce is final. Is my ex-spouse still my beneficiary?

On an IRA, a POD account, a TOD account or an individually owned policy, §732.703 voids the designation and treats your former spouse as having predeceased you. On a 401(k) or other ERISA plan, ERISA preempts that rule and the plan pays whoever the plan document names — Egelhoff and Kennedy. Florida Retirement System benefits are excluded from §732.703 by statute. File a new form rather than relying on any of it.

Can a beneficiary designation defeat a surviving spouse’s elective share?

No. The elective share is 30% of the elective estate under §732.2065, and §732.2035 pulls POD and TOD accounts, jointly held property, life insurance cash surrender value, retirement plan benefits and revocable trust assets into that calculation. Under §732.2075 and §732.2085 the person you named can be ordered to contribute.

What happens if my beneficiary dies before me?

The share usually goes to the surviving primary beneficiaries, not to the deceased beneficiary’s children, because most custodial forms default to per capita distribution. Florida’s antilapse statute, §732.603, applies to wills and powers of appointment — not to non-probate beneficiary designations. Writing per stirpes on the form is what sends the share down that beneficiary’s own line.

Can I name my minor child as a beneficiary in Florida?

You can, but above $15,000 the money cannot be paid to the child. §744.301(2) lets a natural guardian receive up to $15,000 in the aggregate without any court involvement; above that a guardian of the property must be appointed, with a bond and annual accountings, and the balance is handed over at 18. Naming a custodian on the form under the Florida Uniform Transfers to Minors Act (§710.104), or naming a trust, avoids both problems.

Should I name my estate as the beneficiary?

Almost never. Beyond forcing the asset into probate, life insurance payable to your estate loses the §222.13 creditor exemption entirely, and an IRA paid to an estate is not an inherited IRA, so it likely forfeits §222.21(2)(c) protection too. The money then becomes subject to the claim deadlines in §733.702 and §733.710.

What is the difference between POD and TOD in Florida?

POD, or payable on death, is used for bank deposit accounts and is governed by §§655.78–655.82. TOD, or transfer on death, is used for securities and brokerage accounts under the Florida Uniform Transfer-on-Death Security Registration Act, §§711.50–711.512. Both keep the asset out of probate, and neither gives the beneficiary any rights while you are alive.

What are the disadvantages of a payable on death account?

It pays outright, immediately, with no conditions — no protection if the recipient has creditors, receives government benefits, or is a minor. It is counted in a surviving spouse’s elective estate under §732.2035(3). And if every named payee predeceases you, the funds fall back into your probate estate. Where control matters, a trust as beneficiary does what a POD account cannot.

Who gets my digital assets and cryptocurrency in Florida?

Under the Florida Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, §740.003 sets the order: a designation you made inside the platform’s own online tool controls, provided the tool allows you to change it at any time; if there is no online tool, your will, trust or power of attorney controls; and either one overrides the provider’s terms of service.

Can a will override a beneficiary on a life insurance policy?

No. The policy is a contract between the owner and the insurer, and it pays the person named on the form regardless of what the will says. Crawford v. Barker, 64 So. 3d 1246 (Fla. 2011). A will that purports to leave insurance proceeds to someone else does not bind the insurer — the only way to change who is paid is to change the designation with the company.

Does life insurance go to the next of kin or to the named beneficiary?

To the named beneficiary, always. “Next of kin” carries no legal weight against a valid beneficiary designation in Florida, however close the relation. Next of kin only matters if no beneficiary is named and no default in the policy applies, at which point the money falls into the estate and passes by will or by intestacy.

Do beneficiaries pay taxes on life insurance in Florida?

No. A life insurance death benefit is income-tax-free to the beneficiary under I.R.C. §101(a), and Florida imposes no inheritance tax. A traditional IRA or 401(k) is the opposite — every dollar is ordinary income to the person who inherits it, under I.R.C. §691, now compressed into ten years. Which asset you leave to whom changes what they actually keep.

Who gets a 401(k) if no beneficiary is named?

A surviving spouse, by operation of federal law — ERISA makes the spouse the default beneficiary of a qualified plan, which is why naming anyone else requires written spousal consent. An IRA is different: there is no federal default, so the custodial agreement controls, and custodians vary between spouse-then-children and straight to the estate.

If you name a trust as the beneficiary of a retirement account or policy, the trustee you pick controls what the beneficiaries actually receive. See choosing a trustee in Florida.