The Voya beneficiary change form tells Voya Financial who should receive your retirement account balance when you die. You can get it from your employer’s HR department, download it from the Voya participant portal, or in many plans update the designation entirely online by logging in at voya.com.1Voya. Beneficiaries Whatever route you use, the designation on file with Voya overrides your will, so filing a fresh form after a marriage, divorce, birth, or death is the only reliable way to keep the account pointed where you want it.
What to Have Ready Before You Start
The form asks for the same core information whether you complete it online or on paper. Pull these together first:
- Your plan name and plan or group number, which appear on your quarterly statement or your Voya dashboard. If your employer sponsors more than one Voya plan (say a 401(k) and a 457(b)), each plan needs its own designation.2Voya. Voya Beneficiary Change Form
- Your Social Security number, so Voya can match the form to your account.3Voya Retirement. Voya Beneficiary Change Form
- Each beneficiary’s full legal name, date of birth, Social Security number or ITIN, mailing address, and phone number.3Voya Retirement. Voya Beneficiary Change Form
- Each beneficiary’s relationship to you (spouse, child, sibling, trust, and so on).
If a beneficiary lives outside the United States and has no Social Security number, they will need an ITIN before Voya can process a future distribution. Without one, the plan may withhold at the default 30 percent rate and delay the payout.4Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Topics – Beneficiary
Primary and Contingent Beneficiaries
The form splits beneficiaries into two tiers. Primary beneficiaries are first in line and receive the balance when you die. Contingent beneficiaries inherit only if every primary beneficiary has already died. You can name as many people in each tier as you want, but the percentages within each tier must add up to exactly 100 percent, written in whole numbers.3Voya Retirement. Voya Beneficiary Change Form Voya’s own example for splitting among three people: 33%, 33%, 34%.
Leaving the contingent tier blank is a common mistake. If all your primary beneficiaries predecease you and you named no contingent, Voya falls back on its default order of payment: typically surviving spouse, then children, then parents, then siblings, then your estate.5Voya Financial. Beneficiary Designation Form That order may not match your wishes, and if the account lands in your estate, it goes through probate.
The Per Stirpes Checkbox
Next to each beneficiary’s name is a per stirpes option. Checking it means that if that beneficiary dies before you, their share passes to their own children rather than being split among your surviving beneficiaries.5Voya Financial. Beneficiary Designation Form Without the box checked, the default on most Voya forms is to redistribute a deceased beneficiary’s share equally among the survivors in that tier.
Here’s the practical difference. Say you name your two adult children as equal primary beneficiaries at 50 percent each, and one of them dies before you. With per stirpes checked, that child’s 50 percent flows to their kids, your grandchildren. Without it, the surviving child gets everything and the grandchildren get nothing. The form itself notes that per stirpes designations involve complex estate planning issues and suggests running the choice past an attorney.
Naming a Minor or a Trust
You can name a minor as a beneficiary, but the child cannot control the funds until they reach the age of majority (18 or 21, depending on your state). If a minor inherits before then, a court-appointed guardian or custodian handles the money. A Uniform Transfers to Minors Act (UTMA) custodial arrangement is one way to plan for this: you designate a specific adult custodian who controls the funds until the child reaches the legal age in your state.
Naming a spouse or relative “for the benefit of” a child, with no formal legal structure behind it, is risky. That person has no legal obligation to pass the money along, and the child has no recourse if it’s spent.
To name a trust, complete the trust certification section of the form.6Voya Financial. Beneficiary Designation – Non-ERISA You will need the trust’s full legal name, the date it was established, and its taxpayer identification number, and the plan administrator typically wants a copy of the trust document. Trusts give you more control over how and when the money is distributed, which can matter for minor children or beneficiaries who shouldn’t receive a lump sum, but they carry administrative and tax complications worth reviewing with an estate planning attorney.
Spousal Consent if You’re Married
If you participate in a 401(k) or other ERISA-covered plan and you’re married, federal law gives your spouse an automatic right to the entire account balance at your death. Naming anyone other than your spouse as primary beneficiary requires your spouse to sign a written waiver directly on the form. The waiver has to identify the alternate beneficiary by name, and a notary public or plan representative must witness the signature.7Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 USC 1055 – Requirement of Joint and Survivor Annuity and Preretirement Survivor Annuity Without a valid witness, Voya will reject the form.
Banks, UPS stores, and public libraries often provide notary services, and some plan administrators can serve as the witness themselves, which avoids the fee.8U.S. Department of Labor. FAQs About Retirement Plans and ERISA
One trap worth knowing: a prenuptial agreement does not satisfy ERISA’s spousal waiver requirement. The waiver has to be executed while the couple is already married. If your prenup includes a waiver of retirement benefits, you need to reaffirm it in a postnuptial agreement signed after the wedding for it to hold.7Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 USC 1055 – Requirement of Joint and Survivor Annuity and Preretirement Survivor Annuity
Not every Voya plan is subject to spousal consent rules. Governmental and church 403(b) plans are generally exempt from ERISA, so the waiver may not be required. Your plan administrator or HR department can tell you whether your specific plan is covered.
Divorce Doesn’t Remove an Ex Automatically
Divorce does not remove a former spouse from your beneficiary designation, even if state law says it should. The U.S. Supreme Court held in Egelhoff v. Egelhoff (2001) that ERISA preempts state revocation-on-divorce statutes.9Legal Information Institute. Egelhoff v Egelhoff Voya’s plan administrator has to pay whoever is named on the form, married or not.
This is where people get burned. If your divorce decree awards the retirement account to you free and clear but you never file a new beneficiary form, your ex-spouse can still collect the full balance. The fix is to submit a fresh Voya designation once the divorce is final. If the decree instead assigns part of the account to your former spouse, your attorney will need to prepare a Qualified Domestic Relations Order (QDRO) that meets ERISA’s requirements; a plain divorce decree won’t force the plan to split the account.
Submitting the Form
Many Voya plans let you update your beneficiary designation entirely online through your account at voya.com. That’s the fastest route, and it gives you an immediate record of the change.1Voya. Beneficiaries If your plan requires paper, or if spousal consent and notarization are involved, you have two other options.
- Mail. Send the completed form to the Voya processing center printed on your form. The address varies by plan, but a common one is Voya Retirement Insurance and Annuity Company, PO Box 9862, Providence, RI 02940-8062. Use certified mail or a tracked service so you have proof of delivery.
- Fax. The fax number is printed on the form itself and varies by plan. Keep the confirmation page as your receipt.
After Voya processes the change, you should receive a confirmation by mail or in the electronic document center on your account. Read it carefully and confirm that every name, percentage, and relationship matches what you submitted. If no confirmation arrives within a few weeks, contact Voya or your plan administrator. A rejected form, whether because percentages didn’t total 100 percent, a spousal signature was missing, or a Social Security number was illegible, won’t generate a confirmation, and your old designation stays in place until you resubmit.
What Your Beneficiaries Will Face
How your beneficiaries withdraw the money depends on their relationship to you, and that can influence who you name. A surviving spouse has the most flexibility: they can roll the inherited account into their own IRA, keep it as an inherited account and take distributions over their life expectancy, or take a lump sum.4Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Topics – Beneficiary
Non-spouse beneficiaries face tighter rules. Under the SECURE Act’s 10-year rule, most non-spouse designated beneficiaries must withdraw the entire inherited account by the end of the tenth year after your death.4Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Topics – Beneficiary A narrow group of “eligible designated beneficiaries” can still stretch distributions over their own life expectancy: minor children (until they reach majority), disabled or chronically ill individuals, and beneficiaries no more than 10 years younger than you. Everyone else is on the 10-year clock, and the balance is taxable as ordinary income when withdrawn.
If you die with no valid beneficiary on file, or all named beneficiaries have died before you, the account defaults to the plan’s fallback provisions. For married ERISA participants, that’s usually the surviving spouse.10Voya. Beneficiary Basics Otherwise, Voya’s default hierarchy runs through children, parents, siblings, and finally your estate.5Voya Financial. Beneficiary Designation Form When the account ends up in your estate, it goes through probate. A current beneficiary form avoids that entirely, and for most people the whole thing takes about ten minutes.