How Do You Find Out if Someone Has a Life Insurance Policy You Dont Know About

How to Notice Out If Someone Has Life Insurance

There are several things you can do to find out if someone left behind a life insurance policy when he or she died. To find an unclaimed life insurance policy, talk with friends and relatives, check personal records the deceased left backside and contact your state insurance commissioner's office.

• Written by Terry Turner
• Edited By Matt Mauney
• Financially Reviewed By Eric Estevez
• Updated: Feb 11, 2022
• 5 min read time
• This page features 7 Cited Enquiry Articles

What Is an Unclaimed Life Insurance Policy

If a person with a life insurance policy dies, but his or her beneficiaries are unaware of the coverage, it is an unclaimed life insurance policy. This is relatively common and can happen for several reasons.

Reasons a Life Insurance Policy May Be Unclaimed

• The beneficiaries are not aware a life insurance policy exists.
• The beneficiaries are not enlightened they are named as beneficiaries in the policy.
• The beneficiaries can't locate the insurance company.
• The insurance company can't locate the policy'due south beneficiaries.
• The insurance visitor no longer exists.
• The insurer and policyholder lost contact with one another.
• The insurer is unaware the policy holder died.

The amount of unclaimed life insurance benefits in the United States topped $one billion dollars by 2013, according to Consumer Reports. At the fourth dimension, the average payout was $2,000 and some were equally much as $300,000.

Consumer Reports estimates that the odds that you are a casher of an unclaimed life insurance payout is most ane in 600 — better than your chances of winning the Powerball lottery.

How to Find a Life Insurance Policy When Someone Dies

There are several ways to find a life insurance policy when someone dies. These include internet tools and some detective piece of work on your own.

The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) — a group that represents the chief insurance regulators of each of the 50 United States, the Commune of Columbia and U.S. Territories — has an online tool that tin help rails down unclaimed life insurance policies.

Once you lot fill out an online form on the policy locator tool, the NAIC will enquire participating insurance companies to scour their records to run across if they have a life insurance policy in the name of the deceased person you listed on the grade. The companies will also look for policies that name yous equally a beneficiary.

The NAIC tool has been around since 2016. More than than 145,000 people had used information technology as of July 31, 2020. In that time, the policy locator had constitute 46,665 matches with claims totaling $650,520,451.

Life Insurance Policy Locator

You tin utilize the Life Insurance Policy Locator from the National Association of Insurance Commissioners to find life insurance policies and annuity contracts of deceased family members and shut relatives.

Source: National Clan of Insurance Commissioners

Other Ways to Find a Lost Life Insurance Policy

The NAIC locator tool but works with participating life insurance companies. If it doesn't turn up a lucifer, you tin even so do some work on your own to runway downwardly a missing or lost life insurance policy.

13 Means to Notice a Lost or Unclaimed Life Insurance Policy

1. Cheque bank statements for premium payments to a life insurance company.
2. Check the deceased'due south mail service for at least one yr after the death for life insurance premium notices.
3. Check with the Canadian OmbudService for Life & Wellness Insurance online search tool if you lot believe the policy may have originated in Canada.
4. Bank check with your state'south unclaimed property function or use the National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators' online holding locator tool.
5. Contact the deceased's previous employers or marriage in case there is a group life insurance policy.
6. Contact the life insurance company if y'all know it.
7. Contact your country insurance commissioner or look online to see if your state has online search services available to look for lost life insurance policies — at least 29 states offer this free service.
8. If you lot take a copy of one life insurance policy, review the attached awarding which volition list any other life insurance policies.
9. Wait through the deceased's personal files, books, safety deposits or other secure storage places for insurance documents.
10. Review the deceased'due south tax returns for interest payments from an insurance company.
11. Search the deceased'due south figurer and other digital storage — external hard drives, flash drives, a Dropbox or other online storage.
12. Talk with the deceased'due south financial advisors or lawyers.
13. Every bit a final resort, you can hire a individual search business firm that specializes in locating unclaimed life insurance policies.

What If the Insurance Company Changed Names or Went out of Business?

If the insurance visitor has changed its proper noun, has gone out of business or has been bought out by another insurer, you may exist able to do an internet search to find out what company currently has its assets and policies.

Once you lot have the new name, observe the state of the visitor's domicile part and contact that country's insurance commission or section.

You lot tin can find a list of insurance company names and home office addresses in "A.G. Best'south Insurance Reports," an annually updated report on companies. It is bachelor in many larger libraries.

Obtaining a Death Certificate When Filing a Life Insurance Claim

To claim a expiry benefit payout from a life insurance policy you will need 2 things: A re-create of the life insurance policy and a re-create of the policyholder's death certificate.

A death document is a legal document recording a person's decease. Obtaining a expiry document re-create is likely easier and more than straightforward than tracking downwards a lost or unclaimed life insurance policy.

Where to Obtain a Death Certificate

• Your canton coroner'due south office or state vital records department
• The funeral home or mortuary that handled the deceased

Expiry certificates are public records in some, merely non all states. In some states, you volition need to provide proof of your relationship to the deceased. In those cases, generally only immediate family members, government agencies, the executor of the deceased'southward estate and funeral directors can request an official copy.

To request a copy, you'll need to prove a valid government-issued photograph ID such as a driver's license and proof of your relationship to the deceased such as a birth certificate or matrimony license.

The life insurance company will as well accept its own rules on how to submit the death document. This varies from company to visitor, so yous should check with the company nigh its requirements before submitting the death certificate along with the policy.

Last Modified: February xi, 2022

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Source: https://www.retireguide.com/life-insurance/payout/policy-search/

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