Editing Beneficiary

{{Short description|Person or other legal entity who receives money or other benefits from a benefactor}}
A '''beneficiary''' in the broadest sense is a [[natural person]] or other legal entity who receives [[money]] or other [[employee benefit|benefit]]s from a [[benefactor (law)|benefactor]]. For example, the beneficiary of a life insurance policy is the person who receives the payment of the amount of insurance after the death of the insured. In [[trust law]], beneficiaries are also known as ''[[cestui que use]]''. <!-- hid this illogical sentence: The beneficiaries of a [[trust (property)|trust]] are the persons with equitable ownership of the [[will (law)|will]] are called ''devisees'' or ''[[legatee]]s'' according to local custom.-->

Most beneficiaries may be designed to designate where the assets will go when the owner(s) dies. However, if the primary beneficiary or beneficiaries are not alive or do not qualify under the restrictions, the assets will probably pass to the ''contingent beneficiaries''.<ref name="United States Veterans Administration 1955">{{cite book | title=Examples of Beneficiary Designations and Optional Settlement Selections for Government Life Insurance: (National Service Life Insurance) (United States Government Life Insurance) | publisher=Veterans Administration | series=VA pamphlet | year=1955 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gQ3959iTzzIC&pg=PA12 | access-date=22 May 2020}}</ref> Other restrictions such as being [[married]] or more creative ones can be used by a benefactor to attempt to control the behavior of the beneficiaries. Some situations such as retirement accounts do not allow any restrictions beyond the death of the primary beneficiaries, but trusts allow any restrictions that are not illegal or for an illegal purpose.

The concept of a "beneficiary" will also frequently figure in contracts other than insurance policies. A third-party beneficiary of a contract is a person whom the parties intend to benefit from its provisions but who is not a party to the contract. A software distributor, for example, may seek provisions protecting its customers from infringement claims. A software licensor may include in its agreements provisions that protect those who provided code to that licensor.

In the context of [[development aid]], the term "beneficiaries" refer to the persons and the communities that use the project outputs: the entities that development-aid projects.

==See also==
* [[Beneficiary (trust)]]
* [[Beneficial ownership]]
* [[Birth certificate]]
* [[Estate planning]]
* [[Inheritance]]
* [[Legal fiction]]
* [[Registered owner]]

==References==
{{Reflist}}

{{Authority control}}

[[Category:Legal terminology]]
[[Category:Wills and trusts]]


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