Benefits » Other Insurance » Beneficiaries
A beneficiary is a person, Trust or an Estate eligible to receive benefits upon your death. Taking the time to choose your beneficiaries now is an important responsibility to ensure that upon your death, your benefits are paid to the person(s) you designate.
You may name any person, Trust or an Estate as your beneficiary. You must specify the percentage of your benefit that you want each Beneficiary to receive. You may also name a Contingent Beneficiary, who would receive your benefit in the event that the Primary Beneficiary pre-deceases you.
In the event that a designated primary beneficiary dies before you, the proceeds will be paid to the remaining primary beneficiaries in equal shares or all to the sole remaining beneficiary. If all designated primary beneficiaries die before you, the proceeds will be paid to the designated contingent beneficiaries. If you do not have any contingent beneficiaries, proceeds will follow the line of succession as determined by the state.
Prior to June 1, 2006, the University of California held information on employee beneficiary designations. Because LANS is now the administrator of the LANL health and welfare plans, it is necessary to re-designate your beneficiaries.
You may designate your Beneficiaries on-line, using the Oracle Self Service application. You must have a CRYPTOCard to access Oracle Self Service.
You will need:
If you have an open life event, such as Open Enrollment, you will need to go through other screens regarding benefits before coming to the Beneficiary Designation screen. If you only want to make changes to your beneficiary designations, you do not need to make changes on any other screens.
If you receive a duplicate Social Security Number error when adding a beneficiary, contact the HR Service Center at 505-667-1806 for assistance. The person you’re trying to add may already be in the system, and a representative can make the existing record a contact for you.
Please contact the HR Service Center at 505-667-1806 to update the contact record manually. Please do not use the Add Another Person option in the Worker Self Service function of Oracle. A Service Center representative can update the contact record while you are on the phone and you will be able to see the change immediately when re-querying the page with the list of Family Members and Others in Oracle Worker Self Service. You can then proceed to the Designate Beneficiaries option in Oracle. Please do not email a request to change a Social Security Number as we cannot guarantee secure transmission via email of SSN’s.
Fill out the Universal Beneficiary Designation/Change Form (Form 1938) and fax it to 505-665-2156 or mail it to MS P280.
To designate a trust:
To designate your estate:
To designate an organization:
You must provide the address, city and state of operation for each organization or corporation listed.
Unless otherwise noted by the employee, form 1938 will designate beneficiaries for all group covered plans to include the following:
Your form will represent your beneficiary designations. The HR Service Center will send you an email confirmation of receipt of the form and manually update the system with your designations. Due to system limitations, designations to trusts and estates will not be held in Oracle.
The form DOES NOT cover beneficiaries for the LANS 401(k) plan. To designate beneficiaries for the LANS 401(k) plan, employees should contact the Fidelity NetBenefits website or call Fidelity at 1-800-343-0860.
You can update your beneficiary designations as often as you would like by using Oracle Worker Self Service. Your latest designation will be your official designation. If information on your beneficiaries (such as SSN’s and birthdates) needs to be updated, please contact an HR Service Center representative at 505-667-1806 for assistance.
To remove a beneficiary’s designation, change the allocation to zero. If a beneficiary needs to be entirely removed from your list, please contact the HR Service Center at 505-667-1806 or benefits@lanl.gov. Please note that removing a record from your beneficiary list will end any contact relationship tied to you in Oracle, which may affect benefits.
Questions? Contact the Lab's Benefits Office at 505-667-1806.