What Does Delaware Life Insurance Cover?
Life insurance is a way of helping your family deal financially when you die. It’s intended to provide financial help to your loved ones when your salary or income is gone.
The money (death benefit) can be used to pay: your funeral expense, pay off debts, pay the mortgage, fund your children’s education, cover everyday expenses and more.
When you start thinking about purchasing a DE life insurance policy, you should first look at your assets. Are you wealthy enough to help with the bills you leave behind? If you are, you might not need a large life insurance policy. The money you leave behind may be enough to cover funeral and burial expenses as well as other bills such as estate taxes. Do you have enough money to cover lost income should you become unable to work? If you don’t have enough to act as a supplemental income, you may want to purchase a larger life insurance policy.
What Types Delaware Life Insurance Are There?
There are two main types of DE life insurance available, and some of them offer more ‘living benefits’, in addition to the payout upon the death of the insured.
- Term Insurance: Term life insurance is considered to be the most basic of life insurance available. Term lofe only offers death benefit protection – if you die during the policy term your beneficiaries get a payment.
- Permanent Insurance: This form of life insurance is different from term insurance because it offers in addition to offering a death benefit, it also offers cash value component that can be accessed during the insured’s life. The cash build up is not taxed under current law.
Term Life Insurance – Term is a temporary type of life insurance that covers you for a set period (term) of one or more years – typically 10, 20 or 30. It pays a death benefit only if you die during that term. Term insurance generally provides the largest amount of death protection per premium dollar.
Below are some of the most common forms of permanent insurance:
Whole Life Insurance – Whole Life a permanent type of life insurance that protects you for as long as you live as long as you pay the premiums. With the most common type, called straight life or ordinary life insurance, you pay the same premium for as long as you live. Whole life is used to extend the coverage past a certain term, and can also build a cash value tax free over time.
Universal Life Insurance – Universal Life is a newer, permanent and flexible type of life insurance policy where the premiums you pay, less expense charges, are deposited into a policy account that earns interest tax free. Charges for the insurance are deducted from the account.
Variable Universal Life Insurance – Similar to universal life this type of permanent insurance is flexible where the premiums you pay, less expense charges, are deposited into a policy account that invests in mutual funds or other investments. This means that the funds have the opportunity to grow more than some of the other types of permanent insurance, and it also means there is risk for losses in value if the stock market declines. Charges for the insurance are deducted from the account.
Survivorship Life Insurance – Survivorship Life covers two people (like husband and wife), and pays a death benefit at either the first death (first to die) or after both have passed away (last to die). Survivorship costs less than two individual permanent policies, so it can offer a larger death benefit for your beneficiaries.
Final Expense Life Insurance – Final Expense also know as ‘burial insurance’ is purchased by seniors to pay for high cost of DE funeral and other related expenses such as a headstone, burial, flowers, and memorial service, so their remaining family does not have to be burdened by the bills.
What Delaware Life Insurance Doesn’t Cover
Life insurance typically will not pay the death benefit if the insured:
- Commits suicide. If the insured kills themselves. In some states there is something called a ‘suicide clause’, which means if the insured commits suicide within a certain time frame, the beneficiary would not get the death benefit.
- Commits Fraud. The insurance company is going to investigate the cause of death. They will look at the events that led to the death and compare them to the original application. If the insured smokes or has some other health issue, or skydives, cliff jumps etc. and did not disclose it on the original application they can deny the claim.
- Does illegal activities. If the insured dies while committing a crime or participating in any kind of illegal activity.
- Involved in Acts of War. If the insured dies in a war.
- Permanently moves outside the USA. If the insured moves to certain countries.
How Much Does Delaware Life Insurance Cost?
How much does DE life insurance cost? The premiums vary depending on the company and their underwriting rules, and it depends on the type of policy an amount of coverage selected. Following are some of the main ‘personal risk factors’ that go into the price of a policy:
- Age – Life insurance gets more expensive as you get older. There is a saying, “The best time to buy life insurance is yesterday.”
- Non Smoker or Smoker – Smokers pay for life insurance.
- Health – Healthier people pay less. Overweight people, those with high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diseases like diabetes etc. will pay more.
- Gender – Women live longer than men and pay less because of that.
- Occupation – Accounts will pay less than people who build skyscrapers.
- Travel amp; Hobbies – If participate in extreme sports like skydiving or travel to dangerous parts of the world, you might pay more.
- Personal Risk Factors – These include your credit history, driving history and criminal history.
DE Life Insurance Quotes
Request a Delaware Life Insurance quote in Arden, Ardencroft, Ardentown, Bellefonte, Bethany Beach, Blades, Bowers, Bridgeville, Camden, Cheswold, Clayton, Dagsboro, Delaware City, Delmar, Dewey Beach, Dover, Ellendale, Elsmere, Felton, Fenwick Island, Frankford, Frederica, Georgetown, Greenwood, Harrington, Houston, Kenton, Laurel, Lewes, Little Creek, Magnolia, Middletown, Milford, Millsboro, Millville, Milton, New Castle, Newark, Newport, Ocean View, Odessa, Rehoboth Beach, Seaford, Selbyville, Slaughter Beach, Smyrna, South Bethany, Townsend, Wilmington, Wyoming and all other cities in DE.
Delaware Insurance Regulations
In the state of Delaware, there are certain regulations that are applicable to both personal and commercial insurance. There are actually tens of thousands of individual regulations, governing everything from the amount of assets or cash an insurance company must have per policy to how insurance companies can advertise, but the list of regulations that you need to know about is thankfully a lot smaller.
DE Commercial Insurance
Commercial insurance, also known as general liability insurance, protects a business and their customers in a variety of ways. One form of general liability coverage is bodily insurance which is physical damage to anyone on your premises other than employees.
Employees are covered under another type of insurance called Worker's Compensation. In addition, general liability can cover properly damage, protect you from personal injury suits, advertising injuries and provide legal defense and payment for judgments.
Delaware is not one of the states where commercial insurance is required to operate a business. Delaware is a modified comparative fault state with a 51% negligence standard. There are no caps on awards for personal injury suits in Delaware and the statute of limitations for filing after something happens is two years.
As for how much insurance you should carry in Delaware, there is no clear answer. The best thing to do is to research the type of business you have and what kinds of lawsuits are possible, as well as what the payouts for those lawsuits usually turns out to be, so that you can see how much liability coverage you should carry.
Delaware Personal Insurance
There are a few different types of personal insurance available for consumers, but the only one that has any sort of regulation that you need to know about is auto insurance. There are laws in place governing how much liability insurance you are required to carry in Delaware. However, there are no regulations that consumers need to be aware of when it comes to life insurance, flood insurance or various other types of available insurance.
As for the auto insurance regulations, the state of Delaware requires you to carry auto insurance that pays as a result of an accident that was your fault. The limits are known as 15 000 USD /30 000 USD /10 000 USD. That means that you are required to have 15 000 USD per person or 30 000 USD per accident in your auto insurance coverage. You will also need to have an additional 10 000 USD for property damage.