Recently an associate shared with me his experience of purchasing life insurance on his children. For any parent who is considering this, it can be very emotional. Hopefully, by reading this article, you too can experience peace of mind.
At first thought, buying life insurance policies for our children when they were 12 and 15 felt like the right thing to do. Buy it now when it’s very affordable; add the rider option that allows you to increase the protection as they grow up, without additional underwriting would be a great asset for them to own in the future.
I always envisioned on that special day in the future of taking my children aside with their new spouse, and presenting them with the policy, changing the owner and beneficiary… beneficiary? Wait a minute, that’s when it stopped being easy. This meant I would need to be the beneficiary of the death benefit on my son’s and daughter’s policies.
That’s when the thoughts that no parent wants to think about started to creep into my head. That’s when it started to feel a little selfish. See my son was racing motocross, my daughter was riding and jumping 1,000 lb. horses over fences at equestrian events. These were not activities like soccer and baseball that most kids their ages were doing. These were activities you went to, where a lot of times, you watch at least someone get loaded on a stretcher, and driven off to the hospital at these events, praying that your child would not be next.
When I met with my agent to sign the application, I was signing my name as beneficiary, it did not feel like a loving act to do, I told her how I was feeling. She understood my hesitancy, she knew no parent wants to think about the possibility of this happening, but said to me to think about the “what if.” What if something was to happen to one of my children? How long would it take emotionally, to be able to bounce back and return to work? Would my leave of absence be enough time?
Over the years I have seen a few parents who did not bounce back from losing a child, some of these parents were even in this industry and sold life insurance. She reminded me, I still would have another child and spouse who were counting on me and that this policy would help if for some reason I could not. This was not the intention for these policies, but after listening to her, I realized this was one more way this policy would be able to bring peace of mind to me and my family, and I signed the app.
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