Member-only story
Life Insurance on a Child Sounded Appalling To Me
Until I wished I’d had it
I’m a casual member of a Facebook group for parents who have lost their children. We are an emotional and easily triggered bunch, to say the least.
Not long ago, a mother posted a question to the group, asking whether others knew if her child’s life insurance would payout based on his cause of death. The cause was an accidental drug overdose.
The mother asked the group at large because that’s how all of our children died and surely of the 10,000+ group members, many parents would be able to advise her.
I read every single answer in the thread — there were hundreds of them. The answer was definitively yes. An accident is an accident, no matter the cause.
However, one response in the thread was written by an outraged mother who couldn’t believe all these parents had the balls to talk about money and payouts when they’d just lost their child.
I thoughtfully read her outcry and completely understood where she was coming from because it seems out of place to talk about insurance payouts in a parents’ grief group.
But I admit there was a small part of me that wished I’d had it.
Soon after my son was born I began receiving all the “Welcome to Parenthood — Buy our product” paraphernalia in the mail. Plenty of this solicitation included children's insurance policy propaganda and it appalled me.
Who in their right mind is looking at their newborn thinking about his death? I sure as hell wasn’t.
The thought of getting paid out for a possible misfortune of my child was hideous. I disregarded every single notion of it.
Fast forward twenty-eight years and there I sat in a grief group looking at hundreds of parents who had collected insurance payouts after losing their child.
Having just absorbed the incredible cost of death on my own, I could only imagine how my burden would have been lightened a little if only I’d had insurance.
