I must be a male chauvinist pig...

[Coytee]

Yesterday for work, I went on site.  Drove about 60 miles to get to a Dept of Children Services location.  Visited (individually) with about seven women and a single male.

They have a pension and a 401K.  Part of what I do is review their reality with both benefit plans.

 

I had one gal with me, I'll call her Tammy Jones...nice gal, down to earth, conventional...  on looking at her pension she had a beneficiary, also named Tammy (however, last name was Smith).  The Beneficiary was posted as a spouse.

 

Ok, so that threw me for a curve.  I've dealt with folks who have a special loved one....but I couldn't shake out of my head.....  EVERYTHING about this gal is what I'd call 100% conventional.  VERY conservative.  That she might be married to another woman struck me as not fitting what I was seeing, BUT, there it is in front of me so it is what it is.

 

I went through her pension benefits and, having never done this before, was making reference that if something happened to "her" then Tammy would get her pension.  She said she understood all of this by the time I was done.  I kicked over to the 401K account.  When reviewing beneficiaries, she had "Billy Jones" down as her primary and Timmy & Sally (children) as her contingents.

 

They were messed up a bit, (dates of birth missing kind of thing) so I dug into them a bit more. She commented that she knew she needed to adjust them so, me knowing she was married to Tammy Smith, showed her how to DELETE Billy.

 

She had an uneasy 'giggle' that she understood...  and to be blunt, I don't recall how we got from this stage to the next.....  she said something.....  maybe like "Why would I want to DELETE my HUSBAND???"

 

To which I got confused.  There was an odd 'vibe' through the entire conversation.  I finally decided to just talk about the elephant in the room, her spouse Tammy.  I said I presume Billy is the father of your children and your ex husband???

 

Uh.....no.  Billy IS my Husband, why would you think that?  I go to her pension and point out her Beneficiary Tammy.  

 

She says "THAT's ME"

 

and now I understood.

 

She was a new employee.  She wanted everyone to know that the pension was to benefit HER verses someone else, not realizing that it's hers by definition and only upon her passing, does it maybe go to someone else.  So she had put her OWN name down as Beneficiary (Tammy SMITH)  She had then married, had children and changed her name to Tammy JONES and didn't know any better about how to properly designate a beneficiary NOR did she ever go back to change her maiden name to her married name as beneficiary.

 

So this entire time, I thought she was gay, married now to another woman and I approached the entire conversation a bit on egg shells so that I didn't say something that might be offensive to her (don't know that I would since I try to be respectful anyway, I was just being extra aware of the situation)

 

She sensed something amiss with me and felt that I was saying some things to her in a bit of a joking way that she TOTALLY didn't understand (talking about if she (Tammy) died, then Tammy would get her pension.  How could Tammy get Tammy's pension, if Tammy was dead?  Well, I had no clue since I thought Tammy was Tammy's spouse.

 

So we finally got it figured out and she's going to fix it (because if she leaves it as is, then NOBODY gets her pension if she passes)

 

We had a nice giggle about this at the end, once we both had full clarity of what was going on and what was on the mind of the other as we had conversed.  

[geezin']

https://makeagif.com/i/WpoH3H

[JL Sargent]

Good thing you helped her out!

 

[Coytee]

Better for her spouse who would not have gotten her pension should something have happened to her.  He probably (and unwittingly) owes me a nice steak dinner .