Life insurance company statistics reveal that 80% of all life insurance policies issued are never paid on. The main reasons fort this include the owner's failure to pay premiums resulting in lapsed policies and the issuance of term life insurance policies that expire without a death payment. Another reason is that beneficiaries never claim the death benefits because of forgotten or lost life insurance policies.
Life insurance policyholders buy life insurance to provide financial protection to loved ones in the event of their death. Unfortunately, some policyholders never inform their loved ones or beneficiaries of the life insurance policy's existence. This seems to occur because policyholders do not want to cause arguments between loved ones over beneficiary rights. Other times, the policyholder dies and even though someone may have known of a life insurance policy's existence, no one seems to know where the policy is located or which insurance company issued it. In addition, life insurance companies do not go out of their way to learn of dying policyholders and will not typically contact the policies beneficiaries to voluntarily tender the policy's death benefits. Because of this, millions of dollars in life insurance proceeds go unclaimed every year.
If you believe that you may be the beneficiary of a lost or forgotten life insurance policy, there are steps you can take to attempt to locate the policy. When attempting to locate a lost life insurance policy, some old fashion investigative work might come in handy. You can try contacting the policyholder's past attorneys, accountants, insurance agents, or other trusted professionals throughout the last few decades to see if they have any knowledge of the existence of any life insurance policies. You can also look through cancelled checks and other financial records to look for any insurance premium payments that might relate to a life insurance policy. Try doing the same for old credit card statements in the event policy premiums were paid via credit card. Try contacting old employers to see if the policyholder owned any group life insurance policies.
You can also hire a policy finder service that will make limited efforts in locating a missing policy for you. You can also hire a more expensive and personalized service which owns proprietary databases to locate missing policies. Missing life insurance policy services can be easily found on the internet.
Sometimes, the life insurance company discovers that the policyholder has indeed passed. When this occurs, the insurer may attempt to locate the policy's beneficiaries. If the insurer is unsuccessful, the life insurance policy is turned over to the state where it becomes unclaimed property. States maintain databases listing the names and addresses of beneficiaries of lost life insurance policies. In Florida, you can go here to check if you are the beneficiary to an unclaimed life insurance policy. As of the date of this blog, the Florida Bureau of Unclaimed Property holds unclaimed property valued at more than $1 billion.
On a national level, you can go to the National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators or MissingMoney.com and conduct a search for missing money, including life insurance policies.
Whichever search option you choose could prove the difference between not collecting anything, to possibly collecting the full death benefits, or the policy's cash value or even stock from a demutualized insurer.
You can reach Miami Life Insurance Claims Lawyer J.P. Gonzalez-Sirgo by dialing his direct number at (786) 272-5841, calling the main office at (305) 461-1095, or Toll Free at 1 (866) 71-CLAIM or email J.P. directly at [email protected].
