Unclaimed life insurance policies are an issue worldwide. For instance, in Spain it was identified that in 2006 about ten percent of the roughly 27 millions of life insurance policies were not cashed by its beneficiaries, due to unawareness of their existence. This led to the enacting of the Law 20/2005 dated November, 14th, 2005, which established the Registrar of Life Insurance Policies and the grounds of which state: “life insurance is often contracted in the frame of contracting services of any kind, such as car insurance, mortgages, injury insurance, travel insurance and credit cards. However, it frequently happens that, in the event of the insured passing away, his or her beneficiaries, not being aware of the life insurance police, do not claim it, therefore losing their rights that they should have been able to enjoy”.
The diversity in legal frameworks on the subject is quite important, with countries where the life insurance policies can be claimed by the beneficiary or his o her heirs at anytime (i.e., the United States), and others that have enacted statutes of limitations, that is, the insurance may not be claimed after a set period of time.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Stilman Research is a Licensed Private Investigative Agency in the State of Florida, pursuant Chapter 493 of the Florida Statutes - License Number A 1500310.