Legal Question in Family Law in California

Any earnings acquired during the course of the marriage is community property. The benefit you've received through your employer consisting of this life insurance policy qualifies as a community asset.

To unilaterally remove your spouse as the primary beneficiary would be a breach of your fiduciary management and control of marital property. Please meet with an experienced family law attorney to explore your legal options.

I have to disagree with Ms. Kock based on differing assumptions. Employer paid life insurance policies are virtually always (literally always in my experience but there might be exceptions) short term life policies with no right of renewal. Unlike whole life policies, which accumulate cash value over time making them quasi-investments as well as insurance, employer short term life policies are only in effect while you are employed. They accumulate no value, they do not carry long term coverage or renewal rights like private term life insurance usually does, and cannot be cashed out the way whole life policies can. In that respect they are much like your accumulated sick days. If you need them they are there but if you don't, or if you quit, they have no use or value. They just evaporate. So no accountant would book employee term life benefits as an asset or property of any kind, community or otherwise. So unless your policy by some strange twist is actually a whole life policy, I think Ms. Kock is wrong that it is a community asset, or actually any kind of property at all, even though most other forms of life insurance are or could be property.

With that said, however, should you die while employed and married, and before the date of separation, the insurance PROCEEDS would become community property because the benefit was paid for as compensation for work performed during the marriage. Therefore, even if you change the beneficiary, your wife would be entitled to 50% of the proceeds. Because of the ephemeral nature of term life policies, the key factor is whether the last premium was paid for by work you did during the marriage or after.

The other tricky part to this is that once you file for divorce, or she files and serves you, a set of automatic restraining orders go into effect. One of them is a prohibition against changing the beneficiaries of any insurance policies before the divorce is final without court approval.

I am unaware of and unable to locate any source that holds you have a fiduciary duty as to how you name the beneficiary of the prospective insurance proceeds. While married your wife gets half, no matter whom you name. You are free to name another beneficiary for your half of the potential community property proceeds. That is, until the divorce starts. Then, as I said, you can't change anything until it's over or you get the court to agree. In order to make sure you don't give her an issue to fight about, however, if you DO change the beneficiary designation before anyone files, you should name her and the other beneficiary as 50/50 beneficiaries to show you acknowledge her right to half. Then after the divorce, remove her entirely.