What to do when a Milliman account holder dies

Frequently, yes, and it is the most common way money is left behind in a Milliman-recordkept estate. Milliman's core business is administering defined benefit and cash balance plans alongside defined contribution plans for the same employer — its Total Retirement Outsourcing offering exists precisely to run them on one platform — so an employee with a 401(k) at Milliman may also have a frozen pension or a cash balance account there. Each is a separate plan with its own beneficiary designation and its own claim; claiming the 401(k) does not surface the other one. Milliman itself built the Beneficiary designation tile on millimanbenefits.com to display beneficiary status for ALL Milliman-administered plans in one place because participants miss the second plan. For a survivor, the question to ask the Benefits Service Center at 866-767-1212 is not "how do I claim the 401(k)" but "which Milliman-administered plans did this person have at this employer."

Not whoever the will names. Milliman's own published guidance states it plainly: if you do not name a beneficiary and you die, federal and state laws and the plan's default rules determine who receives the payment from your retirement account — and it notes that a proper beneficiary designation is what keeps the account out of probate court, making payment simpler, faster, and cheaper for heirs. In practice the plan document contains a default order, most commonly the surviving spouse first, then children, then the participant's estate. If the default lands on the estate, the balance is dragged into probate, taxed on a compressed schedule, and exposed to estate creditors — everything a designation would have avoided. For a married participant in an ERISA-covered plan, the spouse is the default beneficiary by federal law regardless, and a designation naming someone else is not effective without the spouse's written consent. A survivor should ask the Benefits Service Center at 866-767-1212 for the plan's default order rather than assume it.

It depends on the payment form the retiree elected at retirement, not on who is named as beneficiary — and this catches families out. A defined benefit or cash balance pension administered by Milliman pays in whatever form the retiree chose: a single life annuity pays the largest monthly check but stops dead at the retiree's death and leaves nothing for anyone, while a joint-and-survivor election continues a percentage to the surviving spouse for life, and a period-certain election continues payments for the remainder of a fixed term. Federal law protects a married participant here — an ERISA-covered pension must generally pay a qualified joint and survivor annuity unless the spouse signed a written consent to a different form — but a consent signed years earlier is binding. So the first question for a survivor is which form of payment was elected, and the second is whether the spouse consented to it. Call the Benefits Service Center at 866-767-1212 with the employer name and ask for the payment form on file.