What to do when a John Hancock account holder dies

Because Express Claims is deliberately limited to the simplest possible claim, and a trust or an estate is not one. To use it on a life insurance policy, all four conditions must be met: the death benefit across all policies must be under $100,000 per beneficiary; the beneficiary must be an individual residing in the U.S., which excludes a trust, an estate, any other non-natural entity, and a minor; the death must have occurred in the U.S.; and the policy must have been issued more than two years before the date of death. Miss any one and you get the full state-specific claim package by mail instead. The same logic applies on the annuity side: Express Claims there is for an individually named beneficiary who is not acting on behalf of an entity or as a fiduciary for another person. So if a client named their revocable living trust as beneficiary for probate-avoidance reasons, they have traded the fast phone settlement for the paper process — a reasonable trade, but worth knowing before the family is surprised by it.

Because a revocable living trust that has been using the grantor's Social Security number stops being able to do so once the grantor dies. John Hancock states the rule plainly: if the trust is using the SSN of a deceased grantor, the trust must obtain a new EIN from the IRS before the claim can be paid. The rest of the trust claim package is: a claim form completed in the NAME of the trust with the trust's EIN, signed and dated by the trustees with their titles included next to their signatures, plus a Trustee Certification form. If the trust or the trustee has changed since the beneficiary designation was made — a successor trustee has taken over, for example — John Hancock also wants a copy of the relevant trust pages: the first page, any pages naming trustees, all signature pages, and any amendments. Get the EIN before you start the claim rather than after it stalls.

It depends on the product line, and the annuity side is the more forgiving one. Normally, when an estate is the named beneficiary, John Hancock requires a court certificate of appointment — Letters Testamentary or Letters of Administration — along with a claim form completed using the ESTATE's tax ID number, signed and dated by the executor or administrator, with the fiduciary title included with every signature. For an annuity contract, John Hancock says that if the estate will not be probated, it may be possible to claim the death benefit with a small estate affidavit, depending on the amount of the death benefit. On the life insurance side its answer is narrower: if no estate is open, the estate has been closed, or it will not be probated, it directs you to consult a legal professional about how proceeds can be claimed under your state's filing requirements. Either way, the small estate route is a state-law question about the size of the payout, so check your state's threshold before opening a probate you may not need.

On a survivorship (second-to-die) policy, do not send a claim form on the first death. John Hancock is explicit: only a NOTIFICATION is required when the first insured dies, and the claim is filed after the second insured dies — which is the point of the product, since it exists to fund an estate tax bill that comes due at the second death. Separately, if the sole primary beneficiary is dead, who gets paid turns on the sequence. If the primary beneficiary died BEFORE the insured and no contingent beneficiary is on file, the proceeds go to the policy owner, or to the policy owner's estate if the owner has also died. If the primary beneficiary died AFTER the insured, the proceeds go to that beneficiary's estate. In either case John Hancock requires a copy of the beneficiary's death certificate as well as the insured's. That sequence rule is why a contingent beneficiary — or a trust — is worth naming: without one, a payout that was supposed to skip probate lands in someone's estate.