If you’ve managed to start a 529 college savings account, pat yourself on the back. You’ll be glad you set one up — and you’re lucky you have money to spare, since plenty of people don’t.

But each of these accounts can involve up to four people: the account owner, the spouse of that owner, the beneficiary and the successor. And if you don’t understand what that means or how it works, it can create big trouble if a marriage breaks up or someone dies.

Here’s what you need to know.

The Four Parties

When you open a 529 account, you become the “account owner.” There is generally just one owner, and that person is the first interested party in our analysis. Mark Chapleau, a lawyer and 529 expert, points to the rules that ushered the accounts into existence decades ago and that describe one person or entity as an eligible account holder.

Why not joint owners, say a married couple or multiple grandparents? That could make assigning taxes and penalties difficult if those owners didn’t follow the rules that give 529 accounts their tax advantages.

But the single account owner setup can create uncertainty for a second parent — that’s the second potential interested party here — which we’ll get to in a moment when we discuss divorce.

Then there’s the third person in the mix, the “beneficiary.” That’s the person who is supposed to end up getting the education. You can swap one beneficiary for another along the way.