This is crucial, because when policyholders intend, but never actually got around to requesting a beneficiary change to take a former spouse off of the policy, that creates legal wiggle room for the former spouse to make a claim on the policy and start an unwanted legal
dispute after the death of the insured.
The legislatively established bright line rule roughly captured the results
of those
disputes, with much less litigation cost, while giving
insureds more confidence that they would not be cheated
of their premiums when they died due to reasons trumped up
after the
death by the insurance company.