being that Im alive, I do not have an estate, how do I straighten this out

being that Im alive, I do not have an estate, how do I straighten this out

You bought a life insurance policy, insured someone else's life, and then made YOUR ESTATE the beneficiary? That's the dumbest thing I think I've ever heard. I don't know who the agent was who arranged the policy for you but they should have their license revoked. If a beneficiary is alive then you name them as beneficiary. If you were dead then your estate would become the beneficiary automatically if there are no contingent beneficiaries. At this point it's too late to change the beneficiary. I would think the insurance company would void the policy and return the premiums since the beneficiary never existed. Only legal entities (i.e. individuals, estates, incorporated entities, etc) can be named as beneficiaries. An estate commences to exist when the individual dies. Before that it doesn't exist. You can always speak to the insurance company to see what can be done but you're going to have to have one hell of an explanation.

You don't.

With an invalid beneficiary clause, the money goes to the estate of the insured.

What idiot agent let you get away with naming YOUR estate as beneficiary when someone ELSE dies? You probably have a halfway decent E&O lawsuit against them. Unless you did "do it yourself" insurance, and if you did, well, you REALLY did it to yourself. Depending on your relationship to the deceased, it might all go to someone else.

You might have made a big mistake. Now you can no longer change the beneficiary. Call the life insurance company and ask. They can put the money into a checking account for you and you can write checks against the account. You can not make deposits into the account, only withdrawals until the money is gone.

That may be one way out of this. But I am not sure. Check with the company.

Wow, that could either be easy or a big mistake. In the future, you make yourself the beneficiary. If you're not here....THEN it would revert to your estate. It almost never makes sense to name an estate anyway because then the estate needs to be probated and is charged on the size of th estate. The point of life insurance is to pay where you want it to get paid.

Call the insurance company.