Before you spend money to hire a service to look for a lost life insurance policy owned by your deceased relative, try these steps:
Contact your deceased relative's bank for copies of old checks or go through canceled checks. Your relative might have paid his life insurance bills by check. The insurer's name was probably written on these checks.
1. Your relative might have paid premiums by credit card, so you might want to check old credit card statements.
2. Contact past employees in order to see if your relative had group life insurance
3. Contact the treasury department in the state in order to see where the policy was purchased. As unclaimed property, death benefits might turn up there usually after three to five years.
If you still won't be able to find the policy, then it is probably a pretty good idea to hire services that will be able to help you find that lost policy. However, keep in mind that this help won't come cheap. 10 or 20 percent of the life insurance proceeds - if anything is found - will immediately go to the help that you hired.
People may send letter themselves in order to directly contact the company to start the claims process, but it won't be easy. Paul Archibald, the lost life insurance finder expert of A Auto Insurers, an independent auto insurance agency in Richmond, Virginia, claims, "If you had the list of companies in front of you, it would take you 10 to 15 hours to print out the letters and put them in envelopes. If you mailed them yourself, the postage cost would be greater than my fee. I can do it for you, and do it faster than you ever could'.
Even though hiring help would be a faster way to find the lost policy, attorneys and unclaimed-property administrators believe that people can conduct their own searches for free - and be just as successful. People can easily check state databases themselves for free, says, Sheila Clancy, a spokeswoman for the Texas comptroller's office. Free telephone or internet services are offered by most states to allow you to check for unclaimed assets.
In order to take advantage of people, some individuals pose as heir finders warns the National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators. It is highly recommended for people to independently contact the unclaimed-property office and consumer protection division in their state, in order to check for any complaints or allegations of fraud against any heir find you consider hiring.
Before agreeing to give 10 to 20 percent of whatever is found to the people who helped you find what you were looking for, keep in mind that you can do the job yourself.
