Update Your Life Insurance

Life insurance is mostly available to the public either as an individual plan, or through an employer sponsored plan. Most life insurance agents recommend that policy owners review and update their policies once a year. While it is important to review your policy to make sure that you have enough coverage, see how it is performing if it has equity, and how near you are to the end of the policy effective date if it is a term policy, making sure that the beneficiaries are current is one of the most important items.

In case you don't know what a beneficiary is, it is the person or person written into the policy who receive the money if the insured dies. When an insured dies, the insurance company pays whom ever is listed as the beneficiary. There have been many documented cases where the beneficiary was not changed when it should have been, and the wrong person gets the money. This happens most frequently when couples get divorced, and don't change beneficiary to the new spouse. Since the policy pays who is listed as beneficiary, the ex will get the money, and it is virtually impossible to challange this in court. Not updating children beneficiaries is another issue. They all need to be listed, and the policy can spell out, and should what percentage each receive.

If you are an estate attorney reading this, please make sure that not only are your client's wills updated, but their life policies too. If you are just an insured, make sure you have some kind of will, however simple, and don't become one of the statistics where the wrong individual has a chance at 'free money' if there is a death claim on a policy.