The Insurancy Blog
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Category:Life Insurance109
Life Insurance
109 articles found
Life InsuranceWhy Women Need Life Insurance - Key Stats and Reasons
Women are underinsured compared to men despite earning, caregiving, and living longer. A stay-at-home mom's labor would cost a full-time salary to replace, women make up nearly half the workforce, and family history factors like BRCA affect insurability, which makes locking in coverage early especially valuable for women.
Brian Greenberg•Updated Jul 2026
Life Insurance9 Ways Life Insurance Will Not Pay Out - Denied Claims
Life insurance almost always pays, but nine situations can void a payout: death during the two year suicide exclusion, withholding information on the application, dangerous activities, illegal activities, act of war clauses, living outside the United States, fraud, missing insurable interest, and lapses caused by policy replacement. Honest applications and premiums paid on time prevent nearly all of them.
Brian Greenberg•Updated Jul 2026
Life InsuranceAre Life Insurance Premiums a Deductible Business Expense?
Life insurance premiums are generally not a deductible business expense when the business is a direct or indirect beneficiary, which covers key person coverage and policies backing buy-sell agreements. The main exception is employer-paid group term life for employees: premiums are deductible, and the first $50,000 of coverage per employee is also excluded from the employee's income.
Brian Greenberg•Updated Jul 2026
Life InsuranceCan You Retake a Life Insurance Medical Exam? Your Options
If your life insurance exam results came back worse than expected, you usually can retake the exam or ask the insurer to re-run specific labs, though carriers differ on timing and rules. Often the smarter play is applying to a different carrier whose underwriting treats your specific issue more favorably, or waiting a few months to correct a temporary result before re-testing.
Brian Greenberg•Updated Jul 2026
Life InsuranceHow to Cancel a Life Insurance Policy - Rules and Costs
You can cancel a life insurance policy at any time by stopping payments or writing to the insurer. Term cancellations return little or nothing outside the free look window, while permanent policies pay the cash surrender value minus any surrender charge. Before canceling, compare alternatives like reducing coverage, using cash value to pay premiums, or selling the policy in a life settlement.
Brian Greenberg•Updated Jul 2026
Life InsuranceHow Many Life Insurance Policies Can You Have?
You can own as many life insurance policies as you like, from one insurer or several. The practical cap is total coverage: underwriters justify your combined death benefit against income and financial obligations. Laddering multiple term policies is the most popular reason to hold several, letting coverage and premiums step down as debts get paid off.
Brian Greenberg•Updated Jul 2026
Life InsuranceHow to Use Life Insurance While Alive - Living Benefits
Several kinds of life insurance pay benefits while you are alive. Permanent policies build cash value you can borrow against, withdraw, or surrender, and many policies offer living benefit riders that accelerate the death benefit after a serious diagnosis. The tradeoff: money used while living typically reduces what your beneficiaries receive.
Brian Greenberg•Updated Jul 2026
Life InsuranceCourt-Ordered Life Insurance in Divorce - How It Works
Courts routinely order a divorcing spouse to carry life insurance so alimony and child support survive their death. The paying spouse typically owns the policy with the ex-spouse as beneficiary, sized to the support obligation and its duration. Instant-decision term policies can put coverage in force the same day, which matters when a decree sets a deadline.
Brian Greenberg•Updated Jul 2026
Life InsuranceDoes Life Insurance Cover Funeral Costs? How It Works
Beneficiaries can absolutely use a life insurance payout for funeral costs, though nothing requires them to: the death benefit arrives as a lump sum spent at their discretion. If covering final costs is the whole goal, a small final expense (burial) policy is built for exactly that, with simplified underwriting and face amounts sized to funeral bills.
Brian Greenberg•Updated Jul 2026
Life InsuranceDoes Life Insurance Cover Suicide? The 2 Year Clause
Most life insurance policies cover suicide once the suicide clause expires, typically two years after the policy is issued. If death occurs inside that exclusion window, the insurer usually refunds the premiums paid instead of paying the death benefit. Group life policies often carry no suicide clause at all, and replacing a policy restarts the clock.
Brian Greenberg•Updated Jul 2026
Life InsuranceFunding a Buy-Sell Agreement with Life Insurance - Guide
A buy-sell agreement is a contract that fixes what happens to an owner's share of the business at death, and life insurance is the standard way to fund it: the policy delivers the exact cash needed to buy out the deceased owner's stake the moment it is needed. The two classic structures are cross-purchase, where owners insure each other, and entity purchase, where the business owns the policies.
Brian Greenberg•Updated Jul 2026
Life InsuranceDUI and Life Insurance - How Rates and Approval Change
A DUI makes life insurance more expensive but rarely uncoverable. Carriers care most about how recent the offense is: within the first year or two, many decline or offer table ratings; after three to five clean years, several carriers return to standard classes; and older single offenses can even reach preferred at the most forgiving insurers. Carrier selection matters more here than almost anywhere.
Brian Greenberg•Updated Jul 2026
Life InsuranceHow No Exam Life Insurance Works - Instant Underwriting
No exam life insurance replaces the needle and the nurse with data: insurers verify prescription histories, MIB records, motor vehicle reports, and application answers, then run them through underwriting models that can approve qualifying applicants in minutes. Healthy applicants get real fully underwritten pricing without labs, while guaranteed issue products serve those who cannot qualify.
Brian Greenberg•Updated Jul 2026
Life InsuranceLife Insurance Rate Classes - How Insurers Decide Yours
Your rate class is the single biggest driver of your life insurance price. Insurers sort applicants into classes like Preferred Plus, Preferred, Standard Plus, and Standard (plus table ratings below that) based on health history, build, blood work, family history, driving record, and nicotine use. Each carrier draws the lines differently, which is why shopping the same profile across carriers changes the quote.
Brian Greenberg•Updated Jul 2026
Life InsuranceHow Long Does a Life Insurance Application Take? Timeline
The life insurance application timeline depends on the underwriting path. No-exam accelerated underwriting can approve qualifying applicants the same day. Fully underwritten policies typically take four to eight weeks: application, exam scheduling, lab results, medical records requests, underwriting review, and offer. Records requests from doctors' offices are the most common bottleneck.
Brian Greenberg•Updated Jul 2026
Life InsuranceHow to Find Out if Someone Has Life Insurance - 6 Steps
Start with the free NAIC Life Insurance Policy Locator, which asks participating insurers to search for policies in the deceased's name. From there, check personal papers and bank statements for premium payments, ask employers about group coverage, search state unclaimed property databases, and consider an MIB policy search for applications made after 1996.
Brian Greenberg•Updated Jul 2026
Life InsuranceImputed Income and Life Insurance - The $50,000 GTL Rule
Imputed income is the taxable value of employer-paid group term life insurance above $50,000 of coverage. The IRS sets the value using its Table I uniform premium rates based on your age, and the amount appears on your W-2 (Box 12, Code C) and is subject to Social Security and Medicare taxes. The first $50,000 of employer-paid coverage stays tax free.
Brian Greenberg•Updated Jul 2026
Life InsuranceLife Insurance Definitions - Glossary of Key Terms
Life insurance has a vocabulary all its own. This glossary defines the terms buyers meet most often: the death benefit your beneficiaries receive, the premium you pay, cash value inside permanent policies, riders that add features like accelerated death benefits, and the underwriting classes that set your price.
Brian Greenberg•Updated Jul 2026
Life InsuranceLife Insurance Dividends - How They Work and Your Options
Life insurance dividends are a share of a mutual insurer's favorable results paid to participating whole life policyholders. Dividends are not guaranteed, but carriers like MassMutual, Penn Mutual, Guardian, and Foresters have long track records of paying them. Policyholders choose among five uses: take cash, reduce premiums, leave them to accumulate at interest, repay policy loans, or buy paid-up additions that compound coverage and cash value.
Brian Greenberg•Updated Jul 2026
Life InsuranceLife Insurance for Estate Planning - Taxes and Trusts
Life insurance is one of the most flexible tools in estate planning: the death benefit passes to named beneficiaries income tax free and outside probate, and it can pay estate taxes and settlement costs, equalize inheritances, and fund trusts. With the federal estate tax exemption at $15 million per person for 2026, most estates owe no federal tax, but state estate taxes and liquidity needs keep coverage central to many plans.
Brian Greenberg•Updated Jul 2026
Life InsuranceCollateral Assignment of Life Insurance - How It Works
A collateral assignment of life insurance gives a lender a priority claim on your policy's death benefit until a loan is repaid. SBA lenders routinely require it when a business depends on the owner. The lender is repaid first from the death benefit if you die with a balance outstanding, your beneficiaries receive the remainder, and the assignment is released once the loan is satisfied.
Brian Greenberg•Updated Jul 2026
Life InsuranceLife Insurance Policy Features and Types Explained
Policy features decide who a policy fits. Accidental policies pay only for accidents, graded and modified benefit policies phase in payouts for higher-risk buyers, no exam and rapid issue policies trade labs for speed, guaranteed issue asks no health questions, return of premium refunds your payments if you outlive the term, and living benefits let you use the policy while alive.
Brian Greenberg•Updated Jul 2026
Life InsuranceLife Insurance to Secure an SBA Loan - What Lenders Require
SBA lenders routinely require life insurance before closing when a business depends on its owner: a policy at least equal to the loan amount, with a collateral assignment giving the lender first claim until the debt is repaid. Term life fits best, and no-exam accelerated underwriting means even a tight closing timeline is workable for healthy applicants.
Brian Greenberg•Updated Jul 2026
Life InsuranceMIB Report - What Life Insurers Know About You
MIB (formerly the Medical Information Bureau) is a member-owned data exchange life insurers use to cross-check applications. Your MIB report contains coded flags from previous individual life, health, and disability applications: reported conditions, lab abnormalities, and hazardous activities. You can request your file free once a year directly from MIB and dispute anything inaccurate.
Brian Greenberg•Updated Jul 2026