What Does New Jersey 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 NJ 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 New Jersey Life Insurance Are There?
There are two main types of NJ 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 NJ 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 New Jersey 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 New Jersey Life Insurance Cost?
How much does NJ 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.
NJ Life Insurance Quotes
Request a New Jersey Life Insurance quote in Anaheim, Bakersfield, Chula Vista, Concord, Corona, Elk Grove, Escondido, Fontana, Fremont, Fresno, Fullerton, Garden Grove, Glendale, Hayward, Huntington Beach, Irvine, Lancaster, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Modesto, Moreno Valley, Oakland, Oceanside, Ontario, Orange, Oxnard, Palmdale, Pasadena, Pomona, Rancho Cucamonga, Riverside, Roseville, Sacramento, Salinas, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, Santa Ana, Santa Clara, Santa Clarita, Santa Rosa, Simi Valley, Stockton, Sunnyvale, Thousand Oaks, Torrance, Vallejo, Victorville, Visalia and all other cities in NJ.
The New Jersey Department of Insurance
The NJ Dept. of Insurance is the regulatory agency behind the insurance rules for the state of New Jersey. If you want to understand these rules, then this is definitely the agency that you need to focus on. Let’s start with limits within the state.
New Jersey Minimum Insurance Limits
- For auto insurance, New Jersey requires $15,000 per person and $30,000 per accident.
- For life insurance, there are certain regulations in place to determine how someone is able to get or offer life insurance, but there are no limits listed.
- For commercial insurance, insurance agents may offer broker or casualty insurance as well as covered property insurance, covered causes of loss, specified perils and open perils along with a number of coverage forms like builder’s risk, legal liability, building ordinance, glass, peak season, inflation guard and peak element.
NJ Insurance Regulations
As for regular insurance regulations there are a lot of things that New Jersey provides that you can look up. For example, there are deadlines for the insurer to pay the claim or deny it, deadlines for submitting paperwork to prove a loss for insurance reimbursement, specific information your insurance company is required to give you and regulations on what information you have to provide to your insurance company.
One of the New Jersey regulations calls for you to be treated by your insurance company in good faith. This means that your insurer must be considered of your needs and must communicate completely and honestly with you about your policy and everything that you need to know about it in order to make a good decision. In turn, you are legally obligated to be honest and cooperative with your insurance company when it comes to your claim.
You should also be aware that your insurance company is required to offer prompt, honest and complete communications. The company and all of its representatives must respond to your communications within 15 calendar days with a complete response based upon the facts that are known.
Finally, be aware that your insurance company is required to have a fair claims process. Unless it is specified in your policy, you do not have to use the forms that are provided to you by your insurance provider in order to make a claim. You can create a list of losses on your own if you need to. In addition, insurers are not able to ask for unreasonable proof of loss. If you provide photographic evidence or video of items that you lost, insurers are not able to ask you to provide additional information.