To hate the comment about "why dont you have life insurance"?

[partinor]

Yes if a partner dies when the family rely on their income, there will be a major impact on the finances of the household. And yes, life insurance would solve at least that impact.
BUT not everyone can get life insurance that covers everything. A LOT of people are born as children with illnesses that can have an impact on life expectancy, and so these will often not be covered by life insurance. With some conditions, it may be that you can not get any life insurance. Or the costs may be too high.
And when I was young and took out life insurance policies routinely excluded causes of death such as suicide or risky behaviour.
But easier to just blame the individuals.

howabout what is your solution to pay for job loss or divorce then? As PP have said insurance is either very expensive or impossible.

Guardians would not "fight" over a life insurance payment. It would be left in trust for the DC.

Currently we have no solution. If my husband were to die, he has a sum of money from his work (widows pension) which would be paid in a total amount and it’s not a lot. I would be entitled to nothing else, as we cannot afford it right now.
I would probably have to rely on my parents to pay the rest of my mortgage off and help me out whilst I found a job that could fit the kids enough to make it worthwhile working.
If I were to die, dh would probably be ok, he would need to hire a nanny and angle for a raise at work, but he’d be ok.

Minnie job loss / divorce are far more likely than death of both parents but as you rightly point out uninsurable. So again the question would be why insure against death of both parents or judge for not doing so when no-one insures against the far more likely events?

Guardians would expect to use the insurance to pay to bring up the DC. If you have insurance have you specified in a Will how you would require guardians to act?

howabout presumably people who have life insurance would insurance against divorce or job loss if it were possible. But as is isn't that's rather a moot point.

DH says life insurance is betting on whether or not you'll die before the end of the term.

Our wills do not specify how the guardian is to act but as all our assets will be left in trust for DS, using the money for any other purpose would be breaking the law.

I would have been up shit creek without a paddle if we didn’t have life insurance when my husband died. My youngest was 18 at the time so technically an adult but I still need to provide a home for him. The cost of the funeral alone would have taken a large chunk of my savings and even though we no longer had a mortgage I still have bills to pay which my part time wages wouldn’t cover. I live in the south east and even though you can cut back on something’s stuff like community charge is still a tidy sum of change each month.I have caring responsibility’s so using my hours wouldn’t be possible.

The only thing which we didn’t do which we should have is adjust the level of cover. Our policy was taken out 20 years before my husband died and we just never thought to increase it in-line with inflation. But at least it was enough to ensure we didn’t have to financially struggle at what will always be the worst time my family has ever had to go through and my husband could die knowing that we would at least financially be ok. It is bad enough knowing that you are firing and leaving your loved ones would would be a million times worse if he had also to worry about how we would pay the bills once he was gone.

@howabout

namechangeyour solution to divorce / loss of career seems to be reliance on the other partner / state. How is that any different to death? The remaining partner picks up the slack just the same and doesn't have to worry about splitting assets to set up 2 HH or supporting 2nd adult.

Eh? Where did I say that? I said divorce doesn't stop you earning an income, yes you're a single parent but you have 2 parents still to care for children, no need to give up a job to care for grieving children, shared emotional and financial care of children - why is that relying on state / other partner?

In the event of a job loss, I said you may need benefits whilst you look for another job. As a temporary fix.

As far as I know, you cant come back from the dead so not exactly .. temporary

DH says life insurance is betting on whether or not you'll die before the end of the term.

Well of course it is. House insurance is betting on whether your house is going to burn down. Travel insurance is betting on whether you are going to have an accident on holiday. Surely most people know that.

I think if you can't get life insurance as dh couldn't, prioritising paying into a pension is a good thing (disclaimer: I'm not a financial adviser). I inherited some money from dh's pension when he died which helped enormously.

Surely most people know that

I don't know why people keeping saying that. The amount of things that 'most people know' excludes very very many things that are glaringly obvious when you think about it rationally.

The average person really is quite unintelligent and 50% of people are of below average intelligence .

I can't get life insurance because I have MS and it's on the list of reasons that preclude you from having cover. Funnily enough, for the 20 years since I was diagnosed, it hasn't stopped me working full time and paying tax or being approved for mortgages and loans. It makes my blood boil that people with MS and their families are excluded in such a "one size fits all" way.

Agree with previous posters. DH has tried a number of times to obtain life insurance without success (even with a broker) due to pre existing health conditions. People should really be more sensitive as it's a tough blow when someone calls you up to say you are too high risk to be insured.

We are now making yet another attempt at getting insured so fingers crossed we get there.

My DH died when I was 35 and he was 37. If we didn't have life insurance my life would be so so much harder. Government help has been reduced from payments until youngest child is 18. Now you only get payments for 18 months. My 18months is up soon. It's fine for me as I work and have life insurance but for a SAHM to deal with her own grief, her children's grief, get back on her feet and get a job would be a tall order. Also unmarried parents don't even get the 18months of financial help

I've tried several companies to try and get life insurance and haven't been able to because I have bipolar disorder and have been in hospital in the last 5 years because of it.

It drives me nuts...I'd be happy for them to just fully exclude suicide but give me cover otherwise as I know I'm not a suicide risk.

I'll try an insurance broker!

Here's an article about the issues getting insurance with MH

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/society/2018/jan/19/people-with-mental-illnesses-refused-access-to-insurance-cover

Most employers offer death in service benefits so do check with your HR team, benefits package. It covers death by any cause if you are employed ( ie you do not need to be at work) - mine covers 10 x salary which is ample to pay off mortgage / pay for additional childcare etc

I fear I won't be able to get affordable life insurance as not only do I have bipolar disorder but also binge eating disorder which means I have a very high BMI plus breast cancer runs in the family.

And I really, really need it. Massive mortgage and I'm the breadwinner by a long way. DH would have to give up the house immediately if something happened to me so not only grieving but also homeless

I've tried about ten companies but will try again via a broker...

Whilst there are people with congenital problems or childhood illness that makes it financially impossible to get life assurance but they are very much the exception - it's not expensive to get it for most people but they choose not to despite money not being tight. However if you have a mortgage it's compulsory to have life assurance so I'm guessing there's companies more flexible than you think. In my opinion having decent life cover is something you should take out before you ditch the birth control! But reading these threads (in general) too many people seem to think it's the state (aka us taxpayers) responsibility to sort them out whatever happens eg bigger house, benefits and bereavement benefits. We are insured for £1m in total between work and private cover, it's not worth the risk not having it.

Ps, I renewed my mortgage deal this week and I did have to have life assurance or a similar product in place to pay the mortgage if one of us dies. We do, 4 different policies but o those saying you don't you are wrong, they tightened the rules because the government no longer pays mortgage interest (just lends you the money)

@anniehm - were amongst those people who cannot get life insurance due to DH's pre existing conditions ( which are no longer life limiting due to advances in medicine but the insurance companies haven't caught up).

We've had mortgages and all the bank wanted to know was how we would continue to pay the mortgage of one of us died. All we had to do was show our employment contracts with death in service and pension arrangements and they didn't ask again.

Most employers offer death in service benefits so do check with your HR team, benefits package. It covers death by any cause if you are employed ( ie you do not need to be at work) - mine covers 10 x salary which is ample to pay off mortgage / pay for additional childcare etc

As I said earlier, many people don't die in accidents or suddenly, they die a few years after being diagnosed with cancer or whatever. Death In Service benefits will be useless then, because work will have let you go when you were ill and long before you die.

Death In Service should not replace life insurance, just be a bonus on top of life insurance if your loved one happens to die in the right way.

The average person really is quite unintelligent and 50% of people are of below average intelligence

Err...I hate to be the one to break it to you, but that's not how averages work. If 1 person in 6ft tall, and the other 9 are 5ft tall, then 90% of them are below average height.

If you weren't so thick, you'd have known that.

I used to work in life insurance admin. There are a lot of misconceptions/confusion on this thread.

• generally an insurer makes money through a combination of risk calculation and investing your premiums while you pay them, before you make a claim.

• there are insurers (including the one I work at) that will still offer cover for people who have illnesses, even T1 diabetes, even HIV - they'll simply make that condition an exclusion of the policy.

• the term length of life insurance will be whatever you agreed to at the beginning of the policy. If you're not sure what yours is, call your insurer and check. If you want a policy that will pay out even if you die at 100+ years old, look for a whole of life policy - although these are usually expensive with little payout, due to the inherent risk of insuring someone older.

I'm stunned by someone saying upthread they don't have ANY insurance. Yes, it's about your risk preference, but I can't imagine a world where I'd be ok risking a house fire and being unable to rebuild my house or have alternative accommodation because I didn't want insurance! My home insurance costs about £22/mo and that covers unlimited buildings and contents as well as free legal cover and other bits.

Oops, sorry for terrible formatting

Oh, another misconception: insurers do not try and wriggle out of paying claims at any cost. The FCA/FOS would come down on them like a ton of bricks. The vast majority of denied claims come from a) someone trying to claim for something that isn't actually covered (read your key facts and policy wording so you know what you're paying for!!) and b) people misrepresenting their circumstances when they apply, which means their policy is invalid at point of claim. Yes, insurers make mistakes, but that's what FOS is there for. :)