One of the ground rules when a divorce is pending is not to change insurance status. This applies to the responding party, as well as the petitioning party.
Before the divorce, both spouses may have health insurance through one spouse’s employment. There may be life insurance in which the surviving spouse is named the beneficiary. Both of these situations may well change after the divorce is final: one spouse may have to obtain health insurance from a different source because insurance is no longer available through their (now) former spouse. And the parties may have different plans for naming a death beneficiary for their respective life insurance policies.
So the rule that restrains either party from making changes during the divorce prevents someone from being uninsured out of spite while the breakup is occurring in real time. If the insurance status is frozen, then whatever the beneficiary status was before the divorce remains in place during the divorce. (The exception to this rule is a situation in which both parties confirm in writing an agreement to make a change.)
After the divorce, the rule expires and the insurance status is not required to remain frozen. However, the divorce decree may impose new requirements in accord with the terms of the divorce. For instance, one party may be required to leave the other party named as the beneficiary of life insurance, to secure the payment of spousal maintenance