<prompt> Human: A few days ago, a father posted a question on how to deal with the recently deceased childs death and what to do.Being that Im in my mid 20s, I dont often think about death and such. Today I noticed that I didnt have any beneficiaries assigned to any of my retirement accounts 401k Roth Brokerage, and in the event of my death, my parents would have to figure this out on top of everything else. Take a few minute and add beneficiaries to your accounts. All you need is the beneficiaries name DOB date of birth with the SSN being optional.-Youll come across a few terms that might be new --Beneficiary Type:-Primary beneficiary - A primary beneficiary is the person or entity first in line to receive the assets in your account after your death. You can name more than one primary beneficiary.Contingent beneficiary - A contingent beneficiary helps ensure the assets go to where you want the in the event that the primary beneficiary dies before you do.- Note: Per Stirpes - This option allows you to pass your assets down to your beneficiarys children if he or she dies before you do.-Beneficiary Relationship:-Spouse - A husband or wife, considered in relation to their partner. Non-Spouse - Anyone other than spouse - Father Mother Brother Sister Friend etc.Entity - An organization designated to inherit your assets upon your death.Trust - A legal relationship in which an individual, the trustor, gives another party, the trustee, the right to hold the title to property or assets for the benefit of a third party, the beneficiary.-Links-- Fidelity - How to - Vanguard - How toOther-- What you need to know about naming your beneficiaries for your 401k- Great supplemental article that talks about what beneficiaries can do with the money and more beneficiaries under 18 etc. and another one- Useful glossary for financial terminology.  <response>: First things first: If your situation is at all complicated and having kids makes it complicated, hire an estate attorney to make sure you get everything right, fully legal, and optimal.The money in accounts without beneficiaries doesnt simply disappear. By default, all unassigned accounts go into your estate. This may or may not be what you want, because once the money is in your estate its available for creditors to come after. Thus its better to set beneficiaries than not, but its also better to have less debt than assets in general so that its not really a problem. Some people may tell you that any money that bypasses your estate also bypasses taxes. This is not true. By assigning a beneficiary, youre keeping the money away from creditors, but it still counts when the taxman adds up the bill. Federally most people will be fine, since the exemption is 5.xx million. But many states have much lower estate tax limits, so plan for that.Now that you know why you want to keep money out of your estate, heres a scenario where you actually want it to go into your estate on purpose: underage kids as heirs. If you have underage children listed as beneficiaries, they cant take possession of the accounts directly. In that case, each institution will set up a trust for the account. This trust will be governed by a person appointed by the bank, will be managed by said custodian in a way thats optimal for the bank rather than your heirs, and will charge whatever fees they like. If you have multiple accounts checkingsavings, 401k, IRAs, taxable brokerage, life insurance, whatever else, there will be a trust created for each of them, whittling away at the money youve saved. Instead, you should have a will that creates a single trust per underage heir, and then assign each of the beneficiary accounts including life insurance to the estate. Once the moneys in the estate, its then divvied up by inheritor into a trust for each one, with a custodian you appoint who is supposed to manage the trusts in the way that you specify, and you only pay fees on a single trust rather than N of them. This is where you need an estate attorney.If you dont die before your children come of age, you can then reset the beneficiaries back to the individuals directly and amend your will to remove the part about creating trusts. 