Did your Life Insurance Expire: Now what?

There are two ways in which your life insurance policy can expire. First off, if you have term life insurance there will definitely come a day when your coverage runs out; this is how a term policy works. The other way that a life insurance policy can expire is if you stop paying your premium. As you can imagine, this is never a good idea. After all, if you are going to pay for life insurance for so long, why give up on paying the premium? When it comes down to it, you never want to lose life insurance this way.

The question is: what should you do when/if your life insurance policy expires. This will bring you back to square one, and can pose many problems if you are not careful about what you are doing.

You have several options to consider. If your term policy expired, you can simply buy more coverage from your current insurer. Just remember, you may not be able to get such an affordable premium this time around. For instance, you may have purchased a term life insurance policy for 20 years when you were 30 years old. By the time it comes to renew your policy, you will be over the age of 50. Obviously, you are going to get stuck paying a higher premium due to your age and quite possibly medical history over that time.

If you stopped paying on your life insurance policy for some reason, you are going to be in a tricky position. The first thing that you must do is assess why you let your last policy expire. If it was financially induced, you may not have the money to purchase another life insurance policy just yet. Of course, some people let their policy expire because they want to shop around for something that is more affordable. As a general rule of thumb, you should never let your life insurance policy expire due to a costly premium until you have another one lined up. This way you do not have to go a day without coverage.

It is never an easy situation to deal with when your life insurance policy expires. With that being said, you do have options. Take the time to learn what you can do to get coverage back in place as soon as possible.