12.1 LIFE INSURANCE BENEFICIARY DESIGNATION

Your beneficiary may be any person or persons you name on your beneficiary designation form, and you may change your beneficiary designation at any time by submitting a new beneficiary designation form (the consent of a beneficiary is not required). If you designate more than one beneficiary, benefits will be paid equally to your beneficiaries unless you specify otherwise in your beneficiary designation. The share of a beneficiary who does not live to receive payment will pass equally to those remaining beneficiaries who survive you unless you specify otherwise in your beneficiary designation. Your beneficiary will be the person(s) named in your most recent beneficiary designation on file with the Trust Customer Service Office. However, if your spouse is named as a beneficiary and you are subsequently divorced from that spouse, the beneficiary designation of that former spouse will be considered void. Following a divorce, you may re-designate a former spouse as the beneficiary by providing a new designation form.

If you fail to name a beneficiary or if no beneficiary lives to receive payment, benefits will be paid to the surviving person(s) in the first of the following classes: your

  1. surviving legal spouse;
  2. surviving children, naturally born or legally adopted, in equal shares;
  3. surviving parents, in equal shares;
  4. surviving brothers and sisters, in equal shares; or
  5. estate

To obtain life insurance benefits, your survivor(s) or designated beneficiary or beneficiaries, as appropriate, must submit a certified death certificate.