For couples who have just married, perhaps the first order of business–and one of the most important–is deciding who will pay which bills, from which account. You might decide to keep a joint checking account along with separate accounts, to provide some feeling of independence. Truly joint expenses such as rent or mortgage payments could come from the joint account while payment of personal expenditures follows some predetermined arrangement.
Chances are, newly-married couples will want to name each other as beneficiaries of retirement accounts, life insurance policies, annuities, payable-on-death (POD) accounts, and so on. This may seem basic but it’s a step that’s often overlooked.
Such oversights are unfortunate, perhaps tragic, because a beneficiary designation will override whatever is in a will or a trust document. If you have named your brother as the beneficiary of your IRA, for example, and forget to make a change after you get married, he’ll be the one who inherits–not your spouse, who might need the funds to support your young children.
