{"id":5835,"date":"2026-02-19T14:47:01","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T19:47:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lindabury.com\/firm\/?p=5835"},"modified":"2026-02-20T14:55:37","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T19:55:37","slug":"estate-planning-after-divorce-revisit-your-beneficiary-designations-or-your-estate-could-pay-the-consequences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lindabury.com\/firm\/insights\/estate-planning-after-divorce-revisit-your-beneficiary-designations-or-your-estate-could-pay-the-consequences.html","title":{"rendered":"Estate Planning After Divorce: Revisit Your Beneficiary Designations or Your Estate Could Pay the Consequences"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Many people direct the disposition of their bank accounts, investments, retirement accounts and life insurance upon their death by designating beneficiaries of those assets. When an asset passes by beneficiary designation, otherwise called a pay-on-death provision, it becomes a non-probate asset and therefore passes outside of a person\u2019s probate estate.<\/p>\n<p>In New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania, among other states, a divorce automatically revokes any provisions in a will which benefit a former spouse, unless the will expressly states otherwise. Similarly, New Jersey statute 3B:3-14 provides that a divorce revokes any revocable appointment directing the disposition of property \u2013 such as a beneficiary designation \u2013 to a former spouse unless the governing instrument, court order, or divorce agreement dividing marital assets expressly states otherwise.<\/p>\n<p>This year, the New Jersey Supreme Court considered whether a decedent\u2019s pay-on-death provision on his U.S. savings bonds survived his divorce and satisfied the terms of his divorce settlement agreement (\u201cDSA\u201d). The decedent, Michael Jones (\u201cMichael\u201d), bought Series EE U.S. savings bonds while married to Jeanine Jones (\u201cJeanine\u201d) and named her as the pay-on-death beneficiary of the bonds. When Michael and Jeanine divorced in 2018, the DSA required Michael to pay Jeanine $200,000 over time and also stated that any marital asset not specifically listed in the DSA \u201cbelong[ed] to the party who ha[d] it currently in their possession.\u201d The DSA did not explicitly mention the savings bonds.<\/p>\n<div class=\"read_more_link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lindabury.com\/firm\/insights\/estate-planning-after-divorce-revisit-your-beneficiary-designations-or-your-estate-could-pay-the-consequences.html\"  title=\"Continue Reading Estate Planning After Divorce: Revisit Your Beneficiary Designations or Your Estate Could Pay the Consequences\" class=\"more-link\">Continue Reading \u203a<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Many people direct the disposition of their bank accounts, investments, retirement accounts and life insurance upon their death by designating beneficiaries of those assets. When an asset passes by beneficiary designation, otherwise called a pay-on-death provision, it becomes a non-probate asset and therefore passes outside of a person\u2019s probate estate. In New Jersey, New York, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[92,65,475,343],"tags":[],"coauthors":[177,474],"class_list":["post-5835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-manzo","category-insights","category-lawlor","category-wills-trusts-estates-insights"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Estate Planning After Divorce: Revisit Your Beneficiary Designations or Your Estate Could Pay the Consequences &#8212; February 19, 2026 &#8212; Lindabury, McCormick, Estabrook &amp; Cooper, P.C. Firm News &amp; Events<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Many people direct the disposition of their bank accounts, investments, retirement accounts and life insurance upon their death by designating\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lindabury.com\/firm\/insights\/estate-planning-after-divorce-revisit-your-beneficiary-designations-or-your-estate-could-pay-the-consequences.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Estate Planning After Divorce: Revisit Your Beneficiary Designations or Your Estate Could Pay the Consequences &#8212; February 19, 2026 &#8212; Lindabury, McCormick, Estabrook &amp; Cooper, P.C. 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