Can You File a Life Insurance Claim on a Missing Person?

You want to keep your family together under all circumstances, but some of the hardest challenges that you might face in life might be if someone you love were to go missing. At this time, you might spend a lot of time and money trying to find them, and the longer the search goes on, the greater your financial burden might become.  

Because of the personal and financial gap left by a missing person, you might want to file a claim against their life insurance policy. However, being missing is not the same as being dead, and life insurers usually will not honor claims as long as someone is only considered missing. Here’s why. 

How Life Insurers View Missing Persons   

It’s not impossible to file a life insurance claim on a missing person. However, you will have to overcome a few hurdles.   

For example, suppose one spouse abandons the family (it might not be known if they are dead or alive), and a single parent and their children are left behind. The remaining family members might need support. Therefore, the missing parent’s life insurance might be a necessity that they will need to use.   

However, a life insurer will not view a missing person as a dead person, and they won’t pay out a death benefit just because the insured person is no longer around. Still, you should not terminate their life insurance policy. You want to keep this person’s plan active until the time that you can verify that they have passed away, and that means continuing to pay for it for as long as possible.   

Assumption of Death   

Under ordinary claims scenarios, beneficiaries must submit proof of the insured party’s death—a death certificate—to the life insurer in order to receive the payout. However, in missing persons cases, there might not be a death certificate, which could make the filing process a lot more complicated.   

Every state has laws that allow a missing person’s family to file an assumption of death—a legal declaration of someone’s death—after a certain amount of time passes, and the person remains missing. However, the only way to get this proof is to have evidence that the missing party is, in fact, deceased. Therefore, you will need to work with the police and the courts to prove this fact (as reasonably as possible).   

Once you have this proof, the authorities will issue a death certificate for the party in question. At that time, the beneficiaries can file a claim against the deceased’s life insurance using the certificate. While the life insurer might still have questions about the case, they will be able to work with the authorities to verify that they can pay a claim to the beneficiaries in good faith.