Last week, I was grocery shopping at Trader Joe’s when the tornado siren started blaring. The store manager announced that we had two choices: head to the back of the store to shelter or leave immediately. I left because I had just picked up my daughter, April, from school, and she was waiting in the car with our two foster puppies. We were only three miles from home.

Death Readiness Dispatch

September 9, 2026

Hi there,

 

Last week, I was grocery shopping at Trader Joe’s when the tornado siren started blaring. The store manager announced that we had two choices: shelter in the back of the store, or leave immediately. I left because I had just picked up my daughter, April, from school, and she was waiting in the car with our two foster puppies. We were only three miles from home.

 

But those three miles felt VERY long.... and I was panicking. The sky behind us was getting darker. There were road closures, stop signs and red lights that suddenly seemed to last forever. Yet, in the middle of all that panic, I had one reassuring thought: I have life insurance.

 

My husband was already safely at home in our basement. And if something happened to me, I knew he would be financially okay. I knew where everything would go. I knew there was a plan.

 

It didn’t make me any less desperate to get home. But in a moment when almost everything felt completely outside of my control, it was one thing I didn’t have to worry about. Thankfully, we made it home safely. Then we all piled into the basement: humans, resident dogs, foster puppies, dog beds, crates and all.

 

Estate planning can feel like something you’re doing for some distant, hypothetical future until the tornado siren goes off. And that experience has had me thinking about life insurance a little differently this week. Having life insurance matters but there’s another question that matters just as much: If you died tomorrow, would the money actually go where you think it would go?

 

For divorced parents with minor children, that question can get surprisingly complicated. In Tennessee, for example, a parenting plan may require a parent to maintain life insurance for their children until the child support obligation ends. That makes perfect sense. But then you have to actually implement it, and that's where things can get messy.

Pull out these three things

If you’re divorced and your parenting plan or divorce agreement requires life insurance for your children, here’s something I want you to check.

📋 Your parenting plan or divorce agreement

💰 Your life insurance beneficiary designation

❤️ Your estate planning documents

 

Now ask: Are these three things telling the same story?

 

Your parenting plan might say the insurance is supposed to benefit your children and your ex-spouse is supposed to manage the money for them. But what does your actual beneficiary designation say? If you've named your minor child directly, what happens if you die while they're still a minor? Who receives and manages the money? Does that person actually have legal authority to do it? And is there a document somewhere telling them what they can, and can't, do with the money? These aren't questions you want someone trying to answer for the first time after you've died.

When the court order and the beneficiary form don't speak the same language

This is exactly the problem I work through in this week's episode. I pulled up my own life insurance company's beneficiary designation form and created a hypothetical: I'm divorced. I have minor children. And my parenting plan tells me to maintain $1 million of life insurance for them, with my ex-husband serving as trustee.

 

Then I tried to actually fill out the beneficiary form. I was given 4 choices. Person. Company. Trust. Estate of Insured. And suddenly, a requirement that sounded pretty straightforward on paper wasn't so straightforward anymore. The insurance company even warned me about the potential consequences of naming a minor directly as beneficiary.

 

So what are you supposed to choose? That’s where the parenting plan stops being just a family-law document and starts bumping directly into estate planning. The parenting plan creates an obligation. Your beneficiary designation determines where the money goes. And your estate planning documents may need to provide the instructions for what happens once it gets there. All of those pieces need to work together.

What Divorced Parents Need to Know About 

Life Insurance

This week, I explain:

✅ Why naming a minor child directly as a life insurance beneficiary can create problems,

✅ What happens when your parenting plan tells you to do something your insurance company’s form isn’t designed to accommodate,

✅ How I would use a Will and trust to coordinate the pieces for a Tennessee client,

✅ And why you shouldn’t assume the same solution works in every state.

Want to see what this would actually look like?

In this episode, I talk about how I would approach this situation for a Tennessee client whose parenting plan requires life insurance to be held for the benefit of minor children. And I put together sample Tennessee language showing one way I might draft a Will to coordinate with that requirement.

While this is an example, and not language to just copy and paste into your own estate plan, the question I really want you to take away from this episode isn't simply: Do I have life insurance?

It's: if I died tomorrow, would this money actually go where I want it to go?

Your child doesn't care whether the money gets to them through a beneficiary designation, a trust under your Will, a revocable trust, or some other legal mechanism. They just need the plan to work.

 

Thanks for being here.

PS: Everyone made it through the tornado warning safely, including the two foster puppies. They remain blissfully unconcerned with both tornadoes and beneficiary designations.