Picture someone who did everything right. They hired a good attorney, drafted a thoughtful will, funded a trust, and put their affairs in careful order. Years later, their largest account, a retirement plan built over a lifetime, passed to a former spouse. Not because of anything in the will. Because of a single form, filled out decades earlier and never revisited.
This happens more often than most people would guess, and it stems from a reasonable assumption: that a will is the final word on who inherits what. For a great deal of what we own, that is true. For some of the most valuable things we own, it is not.
Two ways your accounts change hands
When you pass away, your assets move to their next owner in one of two broad ways.
The first is through your will, administered in a court-supervised process called probate. This is the path most people picture. Your will names who receives what, and the court sees that your instructions are carried out.
The second path skips the will entirely. Certain accounts carry their own built-in instructions, and those instructions take precedence over anything your will says. There are two common mechanisms at work:
The named beneficiary. Retirement accounts (IRAs, Roth IRAs, 401(k)s) and any account with a Transfer on Death (TOD) designation pass directly to the person named on the form. This is a contract between you and the institution, and it does not wait for probate or defer to your will.
The account title itself. An account held jointly with right of survivorship (JTWROS) passes automatically to the surviving owner the moment you are gone, again regardless of what your will provides.
In other words, for these accounts, the form on file is the will. Whatever it says, it wins.
Why the system works this way
At first glance, this can feel like a flaw. It is closer to a feature. These mechanisms exist to let assets pass quickly, privately, and without the cost and delay of probate. Used deliberately, they are a genuine gift to the people you leave behind.
The flip side is that a tool designed to make things simpler can quietly work against your intentions when it is left unattended. A beneficiary form reflects your life at the moment you signed it. Lives change. Marriages begin and end, children and grandchildren arrive, relationships shift over the years. The form does not update itself to keep pace.
The good news
Here is the reassuring part. Unlike so much in estate planning, this is not complicated to check, and it is not expensive to fix. It does not require rewriting your plan. It requires a review: pulling up each account, confirming who is named, and making sure those names still reflect what you would want today.
That is where a conversation with your estate attorney, your tax advisor, and your advisor at JAG earns its keep. We can help you take inventory of how each of your accounts is titled and designated, and work to make sure the whole picture, the will and the forms alike, is pulling in the same direction.