<prompt> Human: Sorry if this kind of a strange question, but my estranged father passed away in November. He left his entire annuity to his girlfriend but since he didnt have an actual will his children are left with the responsibility of liquidating his remaining assets and doing any other post-death stuff that needs to be taken care of.My question is this, we have seen from his bank statements that he had some sort of life insurance, but we are pretty sure the beneficiary will be the girlfriend, and we have no interest in doing a bunch of legwork so she can get more money. Is there any way we can check to see who the beneficiary is without having to do all the work to get the girlfriend the money if it is her?  <response>: Generally, life insurance companies wont tell you who the beneficiary is. What you do is request forms from them, that you fill out proving who you are and who the deceased is and how the deceased died such as via a death certificate. They will then tell you whether or not you are due anything, and if you are, how much. However, they generally wont tell you whether anyone else is due anything. And generally, they wont go out of their way to notify anyone of anything -- it is up to the beneficiaries to contact them. They want to delay any payouts as long as possible, so they dont have any vested interest in going out and finding beneficiaries and telling them what they are due.Edit: By the way, by law the life insurance does not go through the estate, it goes directly to the beneficiary, tax free, and creditors of the estate cant put a claim on it. So the estate is usually not involved in the life insurance. Thus whichever child is handling the estate doing the post-death stuff as you put it generally doesnt need to be concerned with any life insurance unless the policy has the estate itself listed as the beneficiary. It is up to each individual beneficiary to make a claim with the life insurance company, it is not something the executor of the estate needs to worry about again, unless the estate is the beneficiary of the life insurance. 