Gifts and Beneficiary Changes Before Death: what if you die after but before………….?

In Florida, what happens if you want to change the beneficiary of, say, a life insurance policy, and you die just after you complete the paperwork?  Let’s say that you complete the paperwork and US Mail it in to the company on a Monday and you die on a Tuesday?  Or, consider that you make a gift of privately held shares of stock, say, in a family business…… You sign the transfer documents and they are scanned and emailed to the secretary of the company. But before the company makes the changes on the company’s books, you die.   Have you validly changed the beneficiary designation or made a gift?   Probate lawyers in Florida deal with these matters all the time.  Often, it turns on whether a valid gift was made or not, what, exactly, the policy or the corporate documents state, and what Florida’s courts have said about such ministerial acts.   Florida trust and estate attorneys who litigate matters know that these are often very fact-specific cases.  Probate litigators and trial lawyers recognize that sometimes summary judgment may be proper after complete discovery.