Divorce And Insurance: Are You Covered After You Call It Quits?

Divorce decree

Divorce can be one of the most emotionally devastating times of a person's life. The devastation doesn't always end there, though. It can also financially disrupt your life if you don't make sure you are completely covered by insurance once the divorce is finalized. There are various types of insurance that should be relooked at when a marriage ends. These include: life, health, car and home, long-term care and disability.

Life insurance

The money put into life insurance is usually a larger amount than what goes into other assets. Term life policies are ones that only offer death benefits. Permanent life policies offer death benefits and a savings account. After a divorce, you could fail to realize your ex is still the beneficiary on your life insurance policy. This means if you were to remarry, your new spouse wouldn't receive money from it and your ex would. You could also be in a situation where you're dependent on your spouse's life insurance policy to take care of you, if that person were to die. It's important to get the ownership changed on these policies or else your ex could stop paying premiums or they could change the beneficiary without your knowledge.

Home and car insurance

It's important to verify that home and car insurance is still in place after a divorce in case someone is injured and your name is still on the deed. You could be liable for someone's medical bills if your spouse chose to get rid of liability coverage. If any assets change in ownership after a divorce, you're going to want to notify your insurance provider right away. You're also going to want to look into how different benefits and discounts could change due to divorce. Many companies give discounts for married couples.

Health insurance

It's typical for married couples to share health insurance under one person's employee benefits package. A new policy needs to put into place in the event of a divorce. Legally, you could stay on the spouse's group policy for a limited amount of time if the full premium payments are made. There are also situations in which your employer will provide health insurance coverage after a divorce if you are employed. Health insurance is an aspect of divorce that needs to be tightly negotiated, especially if you have any serious medical or mental needs. It is also important to decide who is going to provide health insurance for any children involved.

Disability insurance

Disability insurance can be necessary for a single person after divorce but it is an expensive burden to carry alone. You'll want to know your options in obtaining disability insurance and have a provision written into a court settlement addressing alimony payments in correlation to a possible disability.

Long-term care insurance

This type of insurance doesn't affect people as greatly as the others during divorce because they're on an individual basis. The main issues are looking at any discounts that could be lost and calculating the premiums during a divorce settlement.

Categories: 
Related Posts
  • Who Gets the Family Pet in California? Read More
  • Can I Date During My Divorce? Read More
  • Moore, Schulman and Moore, APC Offers Specialized Family Law Legal Services for Military Couples Read More
/