How do you find out if a life insurance policy from 1953 is worth anything?

Answer 1

There are several basics and variables that may impact the answer:

1. The contingency that triggers payment under a life insurance policy is the death of the insured while the policy is in force, and the cause of death must not be one that is excluded by the policy. Therefore, if you are asking about the payment of the proceeds of the policy, the named insured must have died while the policy was in force.

2. A policy remains in force as long as premium payments are made. A term life insurance policy does not accumulate cash value, so that payments must be made each month (or whatever the interval specified in the policy), or else it lapses for nonpayment. A whole life policy accumulates cash value, which can be considered something of a savings account inside of the policy (every premium payment is applied to pay for the death benefit, and some is applied to the savings potion of the policy. Therefore, even if premium payments cease, the policy can remain in force for a period of time if the "cash value" is applied to future-accruing premiums.

3. You should contact the insurance company that issued the policy and speak with a customer service representative. Give them the policy humber and the insured's name. They should be able to tell you if the policy remains in force or has lapsed (terminated). Keep in mind that insurers sometimes go out of business or are acquired by other companies. Therefore, it may be necessary for you to, for example Google the name of the company that issued the policy as a means of performing some "archeology" to determine whether the company was acquired by another or went out of business, If the former, contact the acquiring company as described above. If the company went out of business, one or more of the states in which it transacted business would have handled the equivalent of a backruptcy for it. In insurance terminology, this is called either a "rehabilitation" or a "liquidation" depending upon whether there were assets within the company and whether the insurance regulator(s) believed that the company could get back on its feet. A receiver would have been appointed to administer the affairs of the company, and those with financial claims against the company would have been notified and goven a period of time within which to stake their claim.

Additionally, all states have "insurance guaranty funds" that are intended to make partially whole insureds and beneficiaries of insurance companies that are unable to honor claims. Such a fund may apply, or have applied at one time, to your situation. However, the time to file claims against the find are usually fairly short, so if the company went out of business some time ago, any claim may well be time-barred.

I realize that this is a lot to comprehend, but you will have to do it step by step.