Are Beneficiary Designations Protected in North Dakota?
North Dakota automatically revokes an ex-spouse as beneficiary at divorceN.D.C.C. § 30.1-10-04Verified Sep 15, 2026View source; employer plans under ERISA follow federal rules either way, so a 401(k) beneficiary changes only by a new designation.
Frequently Asked Questions
A beneficiary designation on life insurance, a retirement account, a payable-on-death bank account or a transfer-on-death brokerage account decides who receives that asset at death, in North Dakota as everywhere. The designation controls over the will or trust, and an outdated one stays in force whatever the other documents say.
Yes. North Dakota automatically revokes an ex-spouse as beneficiary on divorce for these asset types: life insurance, retirement accounts, pod accounts, tod accounts, annuitiesN.D.C.C. § 30.1-10-04Verified Sep 15, 2026View source. An ERISA-governed employer plan (a 401(k), a pension) follows federal law instead and must be updated by hand whatever the state rule says.
Yes. The federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) preempts state law for an employer-sponsored plan such as a 401(k), a pension or group life insurance: the plan pays the designation on file with the plan administrator, and a qualified plan requires the spouse's consent to name anyone else (Egelhoff v. Egelhoff, 2001; Kennedy v. Plan Administrator, 2009). North Dakota sets no spousal-consent requirement of its own for an individual account.
North Dakota gives inherited IRAs partial protection from creditorsN.D.C.C. § 28-22-03.1(7)Verified Sep 15, 2026View source; the reach can depend on whether the IRA came from a spouse and whether the case is in state or federal court. After Clark v. Rameker (2014), federal bankruptcy law does not protect an inherited IRA on its own.
Yes. North Dakota applies a per stirpes default to beneficiary designationsN.D.C.C. § 30.1-09.1-06Verified Sep 15, 2026View source: when a named beneficiary dies before the account holder, that beneficiary's share passes to their descendants rather than to the other named beneficiaries.
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