Life Events Guide

Marriage

Congratulations if you are getting or just got married. In addition to everything else, marriage has legal and financial implications for your health and pension benefits. It is important to review and address these benefit plan issues early on. Please take note of the items in this summary of the Health and Pension issues.

Plan Checklist

• You must complete a new Enrollment form and include a copy of your marriage certificate. This must be done within 30 days of the marriage in order to ensure Health & Welfare coverage for your new spouse.
• If you are in the Kaiser or United Concordia Plans, you must submit their additional enrollment forms as well.
• You should review your designations of beneficiary for both Pension Plans and the Health Plan. For the Pension Plans, your spouse automatically becomes your beneficiary when you get married. Complete the Designation of Beneficiary forms too, so we have correct information about your spouse on file. For the Health Plan’s life insurance benefit, you need to explicitly change your beneficiary. For the Health Plan, this is done on the Change of Beneficiary form.
• Review the rules for coordination of benefits. Coordination of benefits rules govern how each plan will pay for health care claims if each spouse has group health insurance.
• Review the rules for pre-retirement death benefits under the Pension Plan. You should be aware that the rules for married persons are different from those for single persons. When you get married, your spouse gains certain rights with regard to these benefits.

Also Consider…

Financial planners recommend that recently married and those planning to get married should update a number of personal plans and documents. Here is a checklist of some items which you may need to update, revise, or consider:

• Will
• Living Trust
• Estate Plan
• Durable Powers of Attorney
• Designation of Beneficiary: IRA, 401k, Life Insurance
• Adequacy of Life Insurance
• Adequacy of Disability Insurance