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Can I name a trust as the beneficiary of my life insurance policies, annuities, and retirement accounts?

You can name a trust as the beneficiary of an individual retirement account, a life insurance policy, and an annuity. They are typically done through the language in your documents called a conduit trust. A conduit trust is then designed to distribute these assets over a period of time as opposed to outright to the person that you are trying to receive that benefit of at your death. If you designate the trust as the beneficiary of any of these kinds of financial products, you should consider talking to an estate planning attorney that is familiar with these kinds of products because they have consequences for tax reasons as well as how the beneficiary of that policy receives that asset.