Did you know that incomplete or inaccurate information can make it difficult for us to find your beneficiaries?
To help ensure that your beneficiaries receive your survivor benefits, it’s important that we have complete information on file to locate them at all times. This includes each beneficiary’s name, address, telephone number, date of birth, Social Security Number or Taxpayer Identification Number and relationship to you and the portion of the benefits to which they are entitled. Further, it helps if you inform your beneficiaries that they have been named as such and that upon your untimely demise to contact the Fund Office.
To update or change your beneficiary designation, please visit us online at http://www.ibew697benefits.org and download the Designation of Beneficiary form. After completion which includes getting your signature notarized, mail it back to the Benefit Fund Office.
How important is it to accurately complete a beneficiary form? Recently, a decades-long member passed away. The deceased designated beneficiary died several years prior and, sadly, the member never designated a new beneficiary. In this circumstance, the Plan is left with no other option but to issue its death benefit to the Estate of the deceased member. Which means that the problem of establishing an estate and the matter of paying for all the expense associated with that becomes that of his surviving family. So, if you do not wish to inflict an attorney on your loved ones, complete or update your beneficiary information with the Plan, the Union, the NEBF and the I.O.