You’re married and want to take out life insurance, but do you and your spouse need to do it separately?
And what if only one partner works?
Here’s everything you need to know about life insurance for married couples, regardless of your circumstances or financial situation.
Do Joint Policies Exist?
Joint policies do exist, though not many life insurance providers in South Africa offer them. Legally though, there is no reason why a married couple could not have a joint life insurance policy.
Major considerations would be what would happen in the event of both policyholders dying, as well as what would happen if you were to separate or divorce.
However, as joint policies are not very easy to find in South Africa, most people will instead look at standard life policies covering only one person.
Why Do We Need Life Insurance Once Married?
Marriage doesn’t automatically mean that your life insurance needs change, but the majority of the time there is a shift that is required.
Why? Because marriage typically does have a large impact on your future and your insurance needs – you now have a spouse to provide for if something goes wrong, you may be considering children in the future, and you may have taken on extended family that you’ll need to provide for at some point.
On top of that, many couples will only move in together or buy a home after getting married. All of these are good reasons to look at taking out life cover, or reassessing what cover you need.
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Should We Both Have Life Insurance?
Under most circumstances, yes, both partners should be insured. Stay at home parents and women in particular tend to be underinsured.
For instance, if you are a stay at home parent it could be for a huge variety of reasons. Perhaps it is because childcare is expensive and someone needs to look after the young kids. Perhaps your kids of school-going age need someone to take care of them after school. Or it might be that there’s no other way to get the school run done, as well as have someone who is able to cook, clean, take the children to activities, help with homework and so on. If you are that parent and were to pass away, would your spouse be able to provide childcare, cooking and the other services you take care of? Or would they have to hire in a nanny, au pair, driver and so on at extra cost?
If both spouses work, life insurance can act as income replacement. If you depend on both salaries in order to maintain your lifestyle, it’s important that both partners are insured so that the passing of one spouse doesn’t have a negative financial impact on the surviving one.
Another thing to consider is your bond. If you are co-owners of a house and received approval for finance based on both salaries, you’ll also need life insurance for both spouses when you buy the house.
If you’re married and want to take out life insurance, it’s important that both of you are covered. Whether you do that via a joint policy or two separate policies is down to individual preference and the availability of different life cover options on the market.
If you’d like to get a quick quote with MiWayLife, you can click here for an indication of what you could expect to pay for life cover.
