to expect parents to have life insurance as a matter of course?

[probablyoverinsured]

Is it not the first thing you think about when you first hold your newborn? How can I best care for this little one? What do I need to do/sacrifice to ensure their welfare? in any circumstances?

I appreciate you can't be insured for every eventuality, and with the best will in the world, you can think you have taken out adequate insurance, and in the event it doesn't actually pay out for some reason or other.

But it's about £2 a week, in most cases - surely this is factored into the cost of providing for a child, when you do your calculations? I expect there are a few that can't afford it, but most can.

I am just amazed to hear of someone recently, really struggling, with no life insurance payout for the children, because there was no policy.

Am I living in a fool's paradise? Don't most parents have life insurance? Am I just showing my ignorance? Why wouldn't a parent have life insurance? Do you? if not, why not?

I had it, and then I was made redundant while pregnant. Maternity pay is below minimum wage and I had no job to go back to. Now, being a SAHM to two under 3s is cheaper than working. Cost of living has hit us hard. My DH has life insurance from his work, but I don't have any. When it comes down to it, I have nothing to leave to my children.

Ours is £15 a month for two of us (so not far off £2 a week). It only pays off the mortgage if one of us passes, so the amount it pays out reduces over time.
We don't have a child yet (due September), but will have to get a new lump sum policy then.

What don’t you understand about being unable to get any kind of illness cover or life insurance? It’s not a choice people with disabilities or mental health issues or chronic conditions are making - LITERALLY NO INSURER WILL COVER THEM. Stop insinuating people with health conditions that prevent them having this are feckless and irresponsible. You want something done about it, start lobbying for insurance companies to change their criteria on long term or historic conditions.

Thank goodness my husband had x2 life insurance policies - one was joint tied to the mortgage
When he died last year aged 49 it made such a difference
As they both 'finished' when they paid out, one of the first things I did was take out another policy - £25 a month

Whats the alternative. Force companies to insure people?

I was in my very early 20s when I was uninsurable and it hasnt changed.

BULLSHIT.

Judging people who don't have life insurance is the entire premise of this thread.

I was a single parent back in the eighty’s, I worked, I struggled as back then there was no free childcare , no tax credits, no benefits for working single parents etc etc, but I paid £10 a month for £50,000 payout for my boy if anything ever happened to me. You are right but people don’t think that ‘it’ will ever happen to them…. It does!

This is yet another in a long line of things that makes it expensive to be poor. It's like a tax which rich people dont have to worry about because they don't need it.

The only insurance you need is buildings to cover the cost of a rebuild. If you die without life insurance they’ll just take the house if the mortgage can’t be paid. I’m

I have two policies. I’m not planning on dying any time soon, but when my dad died a few years back I had a panic. Got one policy and then another a year later. My dad took his own life, and again it’s not something I’m planning on doing, but I think it just came so out the blue that it jumbled my brain and I it made me reevaluate so many things.

On the other hand, DH doesn’t have it and it’s looking like he never will be able to get it sadly. He’s T2DM, his dad had and died of cancer and he’s obese at the moment - something he’s working on, but he also had depression and anxiety as the cherry on top. He’s tried to get a policy before and been declined. We have DC, so if he died unexpectedly first then I am a little bit screwed. If I die then at least I know they’re covered. If I could go back and do it again I’d make sure we both had life insurance, but hindsight is a great thing. Hopefully he might be able at some point to get a small policy. I’d prefer he didn’t die obviously, but a small policy would help very slightly if the worst was to happen.

VanGoghsdog Life insurance (like most insurance) has plenty of exclusions
My absolutely favourite been death due to motorcycle accident, as a keen biker I was mightily impressed to spot this in the small print AFTER I'd taken policy out 🙄
Also scuba diving (which LOADS) of people do on holiday
Also supposed to tell them about ANY blood tests, I mean WTAF
Pretty rubbish tbh
I'm convinced they would find a way of getting out of paying

We did but we've cancelled it now our mortgage is almost paid off and kids are mostly grown.

It certainly wasn't £2 a week though. I did my research and went with a provider who would actually reliably pay out if we needed it, rather than one that seemed to be cheap but would do their best to wriggle out of any claim. Not all insurance is equal.

No I don't have it. It's something they try to push when you buy a mortgage and I always say no. I prefer to save money so I actually have the money, rather than paying money into a bottomless pit. I do get life assurance as part of my package at work so that'll do for me. And I keep my will up to date.

I had £30,000 of life insurance at 22. I increased it to £180,000 when I was 28 and with a child on the way. At 36 I added Critical Illness at £60 a month and by 42 it paid out £437,000. I survived. As my income went up I increased my life insurance which now stands at £1.5m and increasing. The policy costs £500 a month and will cease in 8 years time. The probability of me dying before 65 is about 70%.

Insurance is about covering off calamities. Death, disability and life threatening illnesses are all calamities.

People who buy product warranty insurances at the checkout are not covering calamities. They are paying for insurance that is already afforded to them under retailers' goodwill.

Wish insurance was taught in schools.

I think in most cases for it to be of any worth and actually pay out if you need it, it will be vastly more than £2 per week. DP and I took it out when we took a mortgage and had a child 16 years ago and it costs £20 per month for DP, £26 for me and £10 for family cover.

The cover is pre-approved meaning that we went through an assessment at the start of taking it out so we know exactly what conditions are and aren’t covered. The cover is not linked so that if either DP or I die the other policy still stands and the family policy will pay out for either and both. The payments have never increased/decreased.

Ive just worked out that, to date, we have paid over £10k. This is a lot of money to pay in insurance that some family budgets cannot justify.

My point is that the insurance cover is complicated and expensive so can put people off or people put off sorting it.

Don’t have it - due to parents and grandparents having a full house of serious and genetic conditions, I am uninsurable.

I can't get it, even through a broker, due to my mental health history. I even offered to have a no payout on suicide clause and they still said no. YABVU

Thank you for the info, I have never looked into my pension further than ensuring my contributions are getting there via my online account.
When you're someone like me who has never had the financial situation to have insurances, the terminology isn't obvious, I just happened to notice the 'death in service' part of the policy when I read it. I assumed obviously wrongly, that it meant if I died while actually at work, in the kind of jobs I do, you're not used to decent benefits and I'd never have thought that you would get a pay out for just being employed.

It's not really that 'odd' an idea (how condescending btw) when that side of life is unattainable due to finances, so you don't need to know about it, my ex set up the life insurance before DD was born, obviously he wasn't going to pay for it any more and I couldn't afford to.

But thanks for making me feel about 3 feet tall because I don't know about an area of life that I have never had access to 👍

Everyone has access to the library, which features myriad basic personal finance primers.

And why would I need to use the library to find out about services I don't use? So some jumped up wind up merchant on Mumsnet doesn't scoff at my lack of knowledge because I don't know something I've never been exposed to?
Honestly the narrow minded views of some people are well, predicable.
At least I'm open minded to understanding things I don't know, even if it's put across with a patronising head tilt and a tinkly little laugh and done to look superior rather than actually share information.

No, not at all.
My parents didn't have life insurance, it never crossed their minds, and they never needed it.

I didn't either, never have. Children are grown up and adults now, standing on their own two feet in life. I still don't have life insurance, I don't see the need as there's no mortgage or anything like that to pay off when I go. Funerals can be sorted and paid for in advance so why would I? Each to their own and all that....

We don't have any. We both have death in service pay outs as part of our pensions which would pay off the mortgage. If we both died our children would inherit enough to see them ok.

I do agree in general. This is why it's only part of the overall provisions we have.

We insured DH higher than me, he is the higher earner and if I would keel over his salary would be enough to get DD going until she is out of school. He would also get a pension from my work pension scheme (final salary scheme). My share of our normal investments is set up as a trust for DD.

If DH would die, his insurances were set up that we would get a lump sum from one provider and a monthly payout from another one so we would have enough money to cover the loss of his earnings.

We also always have a life insurance tied to the mortgage for both of us so any death would mean no worries about keeping a home.

I do have life insurance, but as I had an eating disorder as a teenager (20 years ago) I am limited in who will cover me. It costs me £31 a month, and I cannot get critical illness cover.

Many, many people cannot afford life insurance if they have any sort of medical past.

It's not "an area of life you never had access to", you have got the benefit, all you have to do is read the terms. You know you have it, so you're just being purposely obtuse by not checking what it means.