[ptero]

TLDR: A person named a girlfriend as a retirement plan beneficiary. They later broke up, he had another girlfriend, they eventually also broke up, and 10 years after the second breakup he died single and childless.

His brothers want money to go to estate (brothers), but the beneficiary form trumped estate (as it should).

It is not clear from reading the post what the account owner wanted. It is possible he just didn't care who gets the money after he died.

The advice makes sense though -- if you want specific beneficiaries, name them on your accounts.

[rkachowski]

I think its important to mention that he broke up with the ex in question in 1989, and died in 2015.

[ptero]

There are, IMO, many things that would be important to mention if we wanted to try to glean the account holder's real intent on the disposition of his retirement account.

For example, how long he had relationship with each girlfriend (he had broken up with the second a while ago, too; for all we know there may be others). What were his relationships with each brother and so on.

But such moral judgements are, to me, not the right way to go. The person had money, if he cared where it should have gone after his death he should have made a will or changed the beneficiary. We should not reject his existing instructions just because they were too old and assume he wanted something different on the basis of some moral judgements. My 2c.