How to Locate LIFE INSURANCE Policy for Deceased Person

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celia
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How to Locate LIFE INSURANCE Policy for Deceased Person

Post by celia »

(This is a revision to an earlier posting in which the button on the referenced page was broken. It is now fixed. Comments near the top of this thread that may be deleted were talking about the broken button.)

Good news regarding finding Life Insurance policies:

I heard California's State Controller, John Chiang, speak recently. He told how insurance companies had access to the Social Security Death Index and when they found out that one of their clients had died for whom they were making annuity payments, they automatically stopped the payments. Several states got together and told the insurance companies they have to also start paying out life insurance benefits when they find out they have an insured who died. Previously they would hold onto the money until someone claimed it and some companies would use some of the proceeds to keep paying the premium until the payout was claimed, so that the payout was less. The states have been suing the companies who did this.

As I understand it, they started with the largest insurance companies who are now required to notify the beneficiary that they hold a policy for which a claim should be filed. (There was a thread a while back in which a boglehead had a relative who died and the family received one of these letters. The boglehead wondered if it was a scam as he never heard of his relative having life insurance.) I'm not sure if this applies in all states yet or to all insurance companies yet. And a beneficiary may not be located if (s)he doesn't still live at the address that was given to the insurance company when the policy started. If the beneficiaries are not located, the payout goes to the state's Unclaimed Property department after a period of time. (In California it is 3 years.) There are now 25 million holdings represented in California's Unclaimed Properties database!

California has the distinction of also being the "default state" for all unclaimed properties. If another state does not have an address for the owner of unclaimed property or the owner's address is a foreign address, the property is forwarded to California. The only property that is not included in this database is if the property was real estate or was probated. I was told that the probate process usually knows where the beneficiaries are.

For deceased or beneficiaries who live in California (or an unknown address in other states), further information is available at:
http://www.sco.ca.gov/protecting_life_i ... aries.html.

The button on that page goes to a search of the Unclaimed Property database for California. (After you do your first search, you can change the default of 25 results returned to a higher number by changing pageSize=25 in the url to something like pageSize=250 .)

Although 70-80% of the search results show holdings for less than $500, I have confirmed with the Controller's Office that life insurance policy payouts are included in the database. They have seen entries for a million dollars or more (although that is rare). Other estate holdings are included such as stock, bonds, cashier checks, etc. California law says that non-cash securities can only be held by the state for 18 months, then they are liquidated. Owners/beneficiaries who file after that will obviously only get the liquidated price plus interest.

There are "finding companies" who look for the high-dollar claims and then contact the owner or beneficiary. They usually tell you that they have located money you are owed and, for a fee, they will help you obtain it (ie, send you the forms which you send back to them). They are allowed to charge a finder's fee of up to 10% of the amount held. If you get these letters periodically, you probably have unclaimed property being held here or in your own state, but you can file the forms yourself for free.

If you want to search by SSN (a name could be misspelled in the database) or have other questions, you can call their office at (800) 992-4647 during business hours (PST time zone).


If you have benefited from this already, feel free to comment.
If you find a similar page for another state, please post it.
Last edited by celia on Sat Aug 30, 2014 2:46 pm, edited 3 times in total.
A dollar in Roth is worth more than a dollar in a taxable account. A dollar in taxable is worth more than a dollar in a tax-deferred account.
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FelixTheCat
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Re: How You Can Locate Life Insurance Policy for Deceased Pe

Post by FelixTheCat »

Does the Search for Unclaimed Property on the CA website work for you? I get webpage is not available.
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Re: How You Can Locate Life Insurance Policy for Deceased Pe

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(deleted)
Last edited by celia on Sat Aug 30, 2014 2:33 am, edited 1 time in total.
A dollar in Roth is worth more than a dollar in a taxable account. A dollar in taxable is worth more than a dollar in a tax-deferred account.
tj
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Re: How You Can Locate Life Insurance Policy for Deceased Pe

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Last edited by tj on Sat Aug 30, 2014 11:29 am, edited 1 time in total.
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celia
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Re: How You Can Locate Life Insurance Policy for Deceased Pe

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(deleted)
Last edited by celia on Sat Aug 30, 2014 2:33 am, edited 1 time in total.
A dollar in Roth is worth more than a dollar in a taxable account. A dollar in taxable is worth more than a dollar in a tax-deferred account.
tj
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Re: How You Can Locate Life Insurance Policy for Deceased Pe

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deleted
Last edited by tj on Sat Aug 30, 2014 11:29 am, edited 1 time in total.
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FelixTheCat
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Re: How You Can Locate Life Insurance Policy for Deceased Pe

Post by FelixTheCat »

It's not just life insurance. I found money for several people for various reasons.
Felix is a wonderful, wonderful cat.
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celia
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Re: How to Locate LIFE INSURANCE Policy for Deceased Person

Post by celia »

Now that I have updated the original post, this is to "bump" the thread to make it more visible.
A dollar in Roth is worth more than a dollar in a taxable account. A dollar in taxable is worth more than a dollar in a tax-deferred account.
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