But it’s something so essential for anyone with kids! Or anyone with a mortgage.
I have a child and a mortgage. I can’t get life insurance. Am I a disgrace for even considering having children?
Disabilities don't generally stop you getting life insurance unless they are life limiting. And if you choose to have children with someone you know has a life limiting condition and who therefore cant get life insurance then it would be reasonable to assume you have an alternative plan to support them.
I’d be interested to know what ‘alternative plans’ most people could make. See if Madonna or Elton John will adopt you? It’s accepted that ostensibly healthy people should still have life insurance as that’s almost certainly the only means by which they could provide for their families if they died; yet people already in very poor health will automatically have several other ways of magicking hundreds of thousands of pounds together? What's the alternative if they don't have a magic money tree - remain a single hermit for the rest of their lives?
The thing is, though, that if you can get life insurance with a disability, it will almost certainly cost you several times more than it would cost a healthy person. I'm far from rare in having a number of disabling conditions and bad family history, any one of which alone would see me turned down for insurance.
As PPs have said, their adverts are all supposedly about wanting to help you have peace of mind that your family will be looked after, but the reality for them is that you’re a commodity to bet on - an investment.
To be blunt, it’s no different really from picking loose fruit at the supermarket. If you see a small, bashed, bruised, blackened one in the box along with the shiny juicy ones, you wouldn't for a moment consider buying it. For many of us, as far as insurance companies are concerned, we ARE that manky old apple.
Also, with disabilities (and don’t forget that disabilities often come in multiples and/or lead to developing complications) is that they aren't just inconsequential badges that you wear and go about your day. They frequently take a serious toll on people’s ability to work in demanding highly-paid jobs - and/or pain and other effects can simply rule out any possibility of working more than part time, however much one may wish to. It’s too easy for a healthy person who is fully able (OK, would prefer not to have to) to work FT on £50K and pay £20/month for LI to berate somebody whose health will only allow them to maybe work on a checkout two days a week on NMW, but who has ‘decided’ not to spend their entire wage on LI. Nevertheless, they need to consider their children if they die, you might say; what about putting food on the table in a non-freezing house for them whilst you're still alive?
In addition, there are two massive elephants in the room when it comes to insuring yourself.
The first is that life insurance is only one side of the coin – you are statistically far more likely to develop a critical illness than to die outright. In such a case, you also cannot work and provide for your family but, unlike life insurance, you yourself are also still around and incurring costs for your family. Critical illness cover usually costs significantly more than plain life insurance, even for the currently healthy, let alone those with existing conditions. Only buying LI is like insuring your house for burglary but not for fire or flood damage.
The second is the fact that, if you have certain disabilities or health complications, you may be able to get life insurance (rarely critical illness insurance) at a much higher price ON CONDITION THAT they will not pay out if you die as a result of existing conditions. Lots of (probably most) disabilities and health conditions don’t exist as an island in an otherwise perfectly-healthy body and mind – pretty much anything could be argued to have been caused by or potentially linked to the existing condition, on however tenuous grounds.
What’s the point of paying potentially £200-£300 every month for the false peace of mind that should you die, you will do so believing your family has been provided for financially, only for them to discover that the insurer refuses to pay out because your MS/CF/diabetes could potentially have even slightly exacerbated anything that might have actually killed you? Much better to have saved the money if you had it spare or otherwise not struggled to pay it to the fat cats to the detriment of your family’s wellbeing/enjoyment in the first place.