Things You'll Need:
- Research
- Patience
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Step 1
Guaranteed acceptance life insurance is pretty much exactly what its name implies--you apply for it and as long as you can pay for it you get it. There is no medical exam, there are no medical questions.
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Step 2
Guaranteed acceptance life insurance, as you might imagine, is far more expensive than the same amount of death benefit for the same person with traditional life insurance underwriting. So why would anyone want to apply for it? The answer is there are some people who may be uninsurable due to health complications; uninsurable, that is, unless they pay extra money in exchange for no-questions-asked life insurance underwriting of their life.
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Step 3
One great downside of guaranteed acceptance life insurance policies, however is insurance companies don't allow very high face amounts--if they did they would fall prey to adverse selection and possibly be driven out of business (or at least that's how they feel about it). You probably cannot get more than $25,000 of guaranteed life insurance if you need it. But there is an answer for this: you are permitted to own all the life insurance you can afford to pay for, and you can own that life insurance in the form of several or many different policies from different insurers. You are thus allowed to own, for instance, $100,000 worth of guaranteed acceptance life insurance in the form of, say, five different $20,000 policies.
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Step 4
There are, however, other limitations to these policies. Some policies only pay out the death benefit on a graduated scale if you die in the first few years of the policy. That is, your beneficiary might receive only a small fraction of the face amount of the policy if you die in the second year, etc. There may be a threshold of a few years you still need to live after the policy is put in force before you beneficiary would receive the full death benefit. And some policies just flat-out have a waiting period--that is, if you die in, say, the first two years of the policy, your beneficiary receives nothing or receives only the return of the premiums you paid.
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Step 5
There are also minimum age requirements and often maximum ages for underwriting rules of guaranteed life insurance policies. Companies vary.
Also, not every state's insurance board allows guaranteed life insurance, so it's not available in every state. Indeed, the guaranteed life insurance policy could potentially cost you more in premiums than it pays out, depending on when you die, and this is such a problem that it's being investigated at the time of this writing by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.
But again, if you have a serious medical condition, and especially if you have this and you are over the age of 50, guaranteed life insurance may be your best option for getting the coverage you need or desire.
The best way for buying guaranteed life insurance policies is to go through a life insurance broker. He can give you the best objective advice about whether it's worth it and help you find more than one company to underwrite you. -
Step 6
One thing to keep in mind if you are middle aged or a senior is that not everybody needs life insurance, although most probably do at some point in their lives. If you have enough assets that your final expenses would all be able to be taken care of by your survivors and you feel no need for any additional estate protection, you are "self insured" and you don't need life insurance.
