Estate planning at National Life Group

Yes. Ownership moves to the trust on the Owner Change form (Cat. No. 40328), which the instruction sheet says covers National Life and LSW life insurance policies plus NL, VL, and CL annuity contracts, and which handles three requests: change to a new owner, change a corporate name, and record a new trustee of an existing trust owner. For an Irrevocable Trust or Revocable Trust as the new owner, the current owner of record signs and ALL trustees of the trust sign. A copy of the trust document is required whenever ownership is changed to or from a trust, but the original policy or certificate does not need to be sent — National Life records the change and mails back an endorsement. Ownership changes on annuity contracts the Owner Change form does not cover run on the Policy Change Request for Annuity (Cat. No. 100305), which warns that an ownership change is a possible taxable event. Naming the trust as beneficiary is not the same thing: that keeps the policy in your estate. Transferring an existing policy into an ILIT starts the three-year lookback under IRC 2035, which is why an ILIT that owns the policy from inception avoids the problem. National Life does not draft ILITs.