Beneficiary on insurance policy and Last Will not the same??

Question

An Insurance policy list one person as beneficairy,but the last will and testement bequeath proceeds from all insurance policies to the estate,,what is legally binding the policy or the will??

Answer 1

The insurance policy pays to the named beneficiary on the policy.  The payout never becomes part of the estate.

Answer 2

Estates are settled in this order: contracts, probate, intestacy.  Therefore, the contractual beneficiary of the insurance policy is upheld before the assets could be distributed by the will in the probate process.

Answer 3

Insurance is passed to named beneficiaries outside of the estate, so what the will says about insurance does not matter unless a policy has no beneficiary or specifically names the estate.

However, insurance may be considered part of the gross estate for estate tax purposes (which has nothing to do with who the insurance money goes to, just whether the estate might get taxed for it).