Can I buy a Life Term Insurance Policy jointly with my partner as well as by myself?
It is just as simple to take out a life term insurance policy individually for yourself as it is to take out a joint life cover policy with your partner. The application process is exactly the same and the Life Insurance premium will be a combination of both partner’s details and represent their joint risk. Depending on the information submitted on the application form it may take longer for the application to be underwritten because your partner may pose a higher risk than you and will therefore need to be assessed further by the insurer’s underwriters. With this being the case you will have to wait for the cover to begin as even with you being accepted already the policy cannot start until both lives have been fully underwritten.
Couples with a joint mortgage or who have children will require a joint life term insurance policy because if one of them were to die the mortgage would then be paid off by the policy proceeds instead of the survivor being left with a mortgage that they may not be able to continue paying on their own, whether they are the main earner or not. With children involved life will change and the children will need to be looked after and a household with only one income will struggle with a mortgage still having to be paid on top of this duty. A Life Term Insurance policy will most frequently be taken out on a first death basis which means as soon as the first life insured dies the policy will pay out to the survivor and then cease to run. It is possible to take a policy out on a second death basis which is most common when a policy is taken out to cover estate tax purposes. With the life term insurance policy only paying out when both of the lives assured are death obviously neither of them are directly beneficial so the proceeds can be used to pay inheritance tax that will be payable when money or property is to be passed on, to their children for example.
