Life insurance? -

If a person has a life insurance policy and names a beneficiary but doesn't let the beneficiary know that they were the beneficiary and the person who had the policy dies how can they find out if there was any type of policy out there if they don't know. Is there someway to check. I mean there could be thousands of companies out there.thankyou There's no central database. You can't type a deceased person's name in, and hope a policy pops out somewhere. Whoever is responsible for their estate, however, should be going through their records, and should locate the policy. That's the main clue. Or, you could go through their cancelled checks, to see who they've been making their payment to every month, or every year. BUT, people do die, and sometimes it's not until 10 years later that someone finds information about a life insurance policy and files a claim. SO, it's a good lesson. If you have life insurance, MAKE SURE SOMEONE KNOWS. Make sure they have the company contact information. Make sure they have a list of all your bank accounts where you have money, any retirement accounts, etc. The executor of the estate upon death and the reading of the will should know who to contact regarding this issue.. Typically the upon the death of the policy holder the beneficiar(ies) are contacted by the insurance company, estate or trust if one is created. You specifically do not need to know the policy was created until the time the death benefit is to be paid out. If however you are trying to check to see if there is any monies coming to you, then I'd advise looking b/c it is simply in poor manners to determine if someone was kind enough to name you a possible beneficiary. Also note just b/c you are listed as one today does not mean it remains as such, the policy holder can change it pretty easy and remove your name and percentage of the death benefit completely if they were so inclined. First of all, people who buy insurance know they buy it. They generally keep records of the fact. Second, while there are "thousands of companies" out there, this falls under the 80/20 rule. The top insurance companies sold the bulk of the insurance policies. Keep in mind, the insurance policies fall into two types. Term insurance is bought year by year. If the policy isn't paid, the policy lapses and there is no insurance to pay off when the person dies. If term insurance was paid for within the past year, there will be evidence of the payment in a check book or credit card payment. There are also policies where the premium is paid out of the policy itself each year (think whole life). Again, there should be some evidence of payment. An annual statement, a 1099-DIV etc. There were some policies in the 1950s and 1960s that could be full paid up front and no further payments would be due and it's likely after a few moves, no other statements would show up. These won't have a huge face value (say $5000), but the company won't pay the money out unless someone asks for it. (Insurance companies generally don't search death certificates to see if they owe anyone.) I found out about such a policy for a relative when I went through every single piece of paper in their home office. (Okay, it was in a file folder marked insurance, but this person had left if off of an asset list they'd left for me.) If you believe there was such a policy, you could help the executor write the largest insurance companies, providing name, SSN and past addresses of the deceased and ask if there were any outstanding policies. I have heard there is an insurance clearinghouse web site where you can check to see if you are the benficiary of anyone's policy . I am not sure this is true but you may want to try doing a search on the net.