The Ascensus beneficiary designation form tells your retirement plan administrator who inherits your account balance when you die, and it overrides your will. To complete it, enter your plan and personal information, list primary and contingent beneficiaries with percentage shares that each add to 100, obtain witnessed spousal consent if you are married and naming anyone other than your spouse, then sign, date, and return the form to your plan administrator.
What to Have in Front of You
Pull these together before you start writing on the form:
- Your plan name, your employer’s name, and your plan or account number, all of which appear on your quarterly statement or your employer’s benefits portal.
- Your full legal name as it appears on the plan’s records, date of birth, home address, Social Security number, and home phone number.
- For each beneficiary: full legal name, date of birth, Social Security number, mailing address, and relationship to you.1Ascensus. QRP Designation of Beneficiary
- Your marital status. The form has checkboxes for “I Am Not Married” and “I Am Married,” and the married box triggers the spousal consent requirement.
A designation is technically valid even without a beneficiary’s date of birth or Social Security number, but Ascensus recommends supplying everything so the administrator can actually locate and pay the person later.2Ascensus. The Importance of Keeping Beneficiary Designations Up to Date For a beneficiary without an SSN, such as a non-citizen relative abroad, an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number works for tax reporting.
Primary, Contingent, and the Percentage Rule
The form splits beneficiaries into two tiers. Primary beneficiaries receive your account balance first. Contingent beneficiaries receive it only if every primary beneficiary has died before you. A checkbox next to each name sets the tier.
At the top of the designation section, choose whether this form replaces all existing beneficiaries or adds to the current designation. Any time your family circumstances have changed, “Replace Beneficiaries” is the safer choice.1Ascensus. QRP Designation of Beneficiary
Each beneficiary gets a percentage. The primary shares must add to exactly 100 percent, and the contingent shares must add to exactly 100 percent. If the math is off, the form comes back.2Ascensus. The Importance of Keeping Beneficiary Designations Up to Date For two children you want to treat equally, write 50% for each. Do not write “equal” or “same.”
If a Beneficiary Dies Before You
The form has built-in default language for this situation, and it may not match what you expect. If a named beneficiary dies before you, that person’s share terminates and gets redistributed proportionally among the surviving beneficiaries in the same tier.1Ascensus. QRP Designation of Beneficiary The form offers no per stirpes option. So if you name three children as equal primary beneficiaries and one dies before you, the surviving two split the whole account. The deceased child’s own children receive nothing.
If you want a deceased beneficiary’s share to flow to that person’s descendants rather than to the other named beneficiaries, you generally need to name a trust instead, or ask your plan administrator whether the plan document allows an override.3Ascensus. Tracking Down Beneficiaries
Naming a Trust, Charity, or Minor Child
The beneficiary fields accept entities as well as people, but each type uses the fields differently.
Trusts
Write the trust’s full legal name in the name field, for example, “The John Smith Revocable Living Trust dated January 15, 2020.” Put the trust’s tax identification number in the Social Security number field and the trustee’s address in the address field. A trust that qualifies as a “see-through” trust (valid under state law, irrevocable at your death, with identifiable underlying beneficiaries, and delivered to the plan administrator by October 31 of the year after your death) lets the plan look through to the individuals for distribution timing. A trust that fails these requirements is treated as a non-designated beneficiary, which generally means faster mandatory distributions and a larger upfront tax bill.
Charities
A charity needs its legal name, mailing address, and Employer Identification Number. Naming the charity directly on the form, rather than routing a gift through your estate, avoids both probate and the income tax that would otherwise apply to a traditional retirement account distribution. The charity receives the funds tax-free as a tax-exempt organization.
Minor Children
A child under 18 cannot legally take ownership of an inherited retirement account. Naming a minor directly usually forces a court to appoint a guardian or conservator of the child’s estate before any distribution can happen, which defeats the point of using a beneficiary form.
The cleaner approach is to name a custodian under your state’s Uniform Transfers to Minors Act. The beneficiary line would read something like “Amy Jones, as custodian for Amos Jones, under the Uniform Transfers to Minors Act of [State].” The custodian manages the account until the child reaches the age of majority under state law, typically 18 or 21. If you want tighter control over timing or spending, name a trust instead.
Spousal Consent
If you participate in a qualified retirement plan such as a 401(k), profit-sharing plan, or pension, federal law makes your spouse your automatic beneficiary. You cannot name a child, sibling, friend, or charity as primary beneficiary unless your spouse signs a written consent directly on the form.4Office of the Law Revision Counsel. United States Code Title 29 – 1055
The Ascensus form has a dedicated spousal consent section in which your spouse acknowledges giving up their interest and consents to your chosen beneficiaries. It also includes a separate waiver of the Qualified Pre-Retirement Survivor Annuity, which is the annuity form of payment that would otherwise go to a surviving spouse if you die before retirement. If you are naming a non-spouse primary beneficiary, both sections need to be completed.1Ascensus. QRP Designation of Beneficiary
The consent is not valid unless witnessed by either a plan representative or a notary public.5Office of the Law Revision Counsel. United States Code Title 26 – 417 An unwitnessed spousal signature causes the form to be rejected. The witness cannot be you. Notary fees for a single signature typically run from a few dollars to around $15 depending on the state.
When Consent Is Not Required
- You are not married and have checked that box on the form.
- You can demonstrate to the plan administrator’s satisfaction that your spouse cannot be located.
- A court order establishes legal separation or certifies abandonment.
- A court has declared your spouse incompetent, in which case the spouse’s legal guardian signs the consent, even if you are the guardian.
- The present value of your vested benefit is $5,000 or less and the plan document allows distribution without consent at that level.
These exceptions apply to qualified plans governed by ERISA. Traditional and Roth IRAs are not subject to federal spousal consent rules, though some states apply community property protections to IRAs.4Office of the Law Revision Counsel. United States Code Title 29 – 1055
Submitting the Form
Submission depends on how your specific plan is set up. Some Ascensus-administered plans let you log in to the participant portal at secure.ascensus.com and change beneficiaries online or upload documents. Others require you to print, sign, and mail the paper form to your employer’s benefits department or to Ascensus. Because Ascensus administers plans for thousands of different employers, there is no single universal mailing address. Your plan’s submission instructions come from your employer or the enrollment materials you received when you joined.
Keep a copy of the signed and dated form. If the original is lost in processing or someone disputes the designation later, your copy is evidence of your intent. After you submit, log in to confirm the new names and percentages appear correctly. If the update has not posted within a couple of weeks, call Ascensus participant support at 888-652-8086 or contact your employer’s benefits department.
Update the Form After a Divorce
Divorce does not automatically remove an ex-spouse from your beneficiary designation on a qualified retirement plan. Even if your divorce decree says your ex waives all rights to your 401(k), the plan administrator is legally required to pay whoever is named on the form on file. The U.S. Supreme Court confirmed this in Kennedy v. Plan Administrator for DuPont Savings and Investment Plan, holding that ERISA requires administrators to pay the person named on the plan documents regardless of what a state divorce decree says.6Justia US Supreme Court. Kennedy v. Plan Administrator for DuPont Savings and Investment Plan, 555 U.S. 285 (2009)
This is how retirement accounts end up going to the wrong person. If you divorce and never submit a new designation, your ex collects the balance when you die, and your current spouse or children have no claim. File an updated Ascensus beneficiary form as soon as your divorce is final. If your ex is entitled to a portion of the account under the settlement, that division is handled separately through a Qualified Domestic Relations Order directed at the plan administrator.