A will covers your belongings and bank accounts. It does not cover your IRA, your 401(k), or your life insurance. Those accounts go to whoever you listed on a beneficiary form — the one you may have filled out years ago. If that person has died, divorced you, or was never updated, your will cannot fix it.
The 5-minute assessment below shows you exactly which gaps you have — and what your family would face if you don't close them. No signup required.
Most people over 55 have at least one. The most common one isn't a missing will — it's a retirement account with the wrong name on it, or no name at all. A beneficiary designation is a legal contract between you and your financial institution. It overrides your will. It overrides anything you told your children. And it was probably last updated when you opened the account.
If you couldn't check all five with certainty, the free assessment shows you exactly where the gaps are.
Each of the facts below is the kind of thing a financial or estate planning professional knows as routine. It isn't secret. It just never got explained. That's what Retirement Shield fixes.
When you name a beneficiary on a retirement account, you're signing a contract with the financial institution. That contract is legally binding. Your will has no authority over it.
When a spouse dies, the surviving partner often has roughly the same income — but now files as a single taxpayer. The same dollars suddenly hit higher federal tax brackets.
Probate is the court process of validating a will and distributing assets. It's public record, can take 18–24 months, and in states like California, attorney fees are calculated on gross estate value.
When someone inherits an asset, the cost basis typically resets to the value on the date of death. This can erase decades of built-up capital gains taxes.
Filing before your full retirement age reduces your monthly benefit by a percentage applied for the rest of your life. It doesn't reset when you turn 65 or 66.
Medicare covers skilled nursing care for up to 100 days per benefit period after a qualifying hospital stay. It does not cover ongoing help with daily activities.
The SECURE Act (2019) eliminated the "stretch IRA." Most non-spouse beneficiaries must now empty an inherited IRA within 10 years. The IRS rules on whether annual withdrawals are required within those 10 years have been revised multiple times.
If you retire before required minimum distributions begin and before Social Security adds to your taxable income, you may be in an unusually low tax bracket for several years. Some people use that window to convert traditional IRA funds to a Roth.
A spouse who never worked can claim up to 50% of their partner's full retirement age benefit. The rules around when to claim, how survivor benefits interact, and what happens after divorce are specific and often misunderstood.
"I have a will. I did that years ago. That counts, right? …Wait. It says an IRA doesn't go through a will. Is Tom still my beneficiary? I never changed it. I never even thought about it."— Margaret, 67, retired teacher · Ohio · Reading her gap report
Margaret isn't confused because she's careless. She's a 34-year classroom teacher who managed a household and filed her own taxes for decades. She didn't know about beneficiary designations because nobody told her — not the brokerage that sends quarterly statements, not the HR department that handed her the rollover forms. They knew. They just didn't explain it in words she could use. Every piece of Retirement Shield content passes one test before it publishes: Does this give someone information their advisor has, but they don't?
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