Beneficiary successor planning is performed by the examination of beneficiary data from a new benefits request and determining available succession benefit plans. The successor planning includes re-using existing beneficiary data associated with the request as well as determining the current requested benefits plan. From this information, the successor planning includes generating successor benefit plans which can re-use the beneficiary information that is available and may also indicate triggering events that, when these events occur, would render the successor plan in effect. Through this planning, manual data entry is reduced and the successor benefit plans are automatically generated.