Thursday, March 04, 2010
When Life Insurance Is More Valuable as Cash
THE children are grown. Each spouse — or a surviving spouse — has enough assets to last a lifetime. Yet a life insurance policy is still in force. It could be used to make gifts to those children now, a down payment on an inheritance, in effect.
Or, in another case, an older person with such a policy needs the money it represents not for heirs but for personal needs — perhaps to pay for long-term health care, to travel or just to make ends meet.
A life insurance policy is a financial instrument, an asset. Like all other assets, it has a value. There is not just the face value — what it will pay at the owner’s death — but some lesser amount that a buyer may pay in order to collect the face value when the insured person dies...
NYT: When Life Insurance Is More Valuable as Cash
Or, in another case, an older person with such a policy needs the money it represents not for heirs but for personal needs — perhaps to pay for long-term health care, to travel or just to make ends meet.
A life insurance policy is a financial instrument, an asset. Like all other assets, it has a value. There is not just the face value — what it will pay at the owner’s death — but some lesser amount that a buyer may pay in order to collect the face value when the insured person dies...
NYT: When Life Insurance Is More Valuable as Cash
Permalink posted by markw @ 4:50 AM 
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