Beneficiary
Questions and answers
Generally, if you are married at the time of retirement, you are required to provide full survivor annuity benefits for your spouse unless your spouse consents to a lesser amount or no survivor benefits.
If no survivor benefit is payable, OPM will pay a lump-sum death benefit under the statutory order of precedence. Under the order of precedence, OPM must pay the lump-sum to any beneficiary the employee/retiree has designated as the recipient of that benefit. If the employee/retiree did not designate a beneficiary, then the next person entitled under the order of precedence is the surviving spouse.
As for Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) benefits, the experts at the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board provided this answer: “A participant can designate any individual, organization, a trust or will as a beneficiary without spousal consent. However the spouse must consent to withdrawal that it is in any form other than a joint life survivor annuity with the spouse as the joint annuitant.”