Don't Forget This Life Insurance
If you hear that someone has passed and did not have private life insurance, remind family members of potential benefits that may be due from the deceased’s employer. Although it’s not advisable to have only group life insurance from work, it beats not having any life insurance at all. Many employers offer group life insurance at two times the employee’s salary.
Someone passed this tip on to an associate who lost a loved one. The family was the midst of soliciting contributions to cover funeral costs. Unfortunately, that’s not an uncommon occurrence in some commun-ities. The associate was told to contact their loved one’s Human Resources, Payroll, or Pay and Benefits Office to inquire about life insurance. For this family, it worked out well, The group life insurance was more than enough to cover the deceased’s final arrangements and leave funds to support surviving relatives for a short while.
Conclusion
A credible employer would attempt to pay out death benefits once they learned of their employee’s death. In this case, the beneficiaries’ contact information was out of date (fairly common). Millions of dollars don’t get paid out each year, because beneficiaries cannot be found. Many times, they don’t even know they are named as beneficiary on someone’s policy.
I recommend annually sitting down with one or two trusted persons, to discuss what policies and benefits you have, confirm beneficiary information and contact information are up to date, update your Will as necessary, and generally make sure your affairs are in order. Someone should know where your important papers are kept. Consider making a master list with employer’s name, address, and Human Resources Department phone number; as well as all insurance carriers names, entitlements, and contact information. On top of having to suffering through the loss of a family member, your family deserves to the peace of knowing necessary affairs were in place. If you haven’t started this process, you can start now.
