life insurance

jimthejanny

my brother died a few weeks ago and we cannot find any insurance policies in his house.he was single and had no children.is there any way of finding out if he was insured because me and my sister have been left with the funeral costs as we are both working and the dss wont give us any help.thanks jim

stephenni1971

Sorry to hear about your situation.

If you brother had insurance it would have to be paid for, and that normally be by direct debit from his bank account.

Can you get his statements and look through them for any payments to life insurance companies?

That said if he was single with no children he would have had little need for a policy - but here's hoping.

lisyloo

Excellent idea to check the bank statements.

Did your brother have any private pension funds?
If he did then it's quite possible that there may be a lump sum entitlement.

Did he also have any "death in service" benefits with his employer?
If he had a "white collar" job then it's possible this was a benefit and might pay out a multiple of his salary.

I would suggest that as well as checking bank statements, that you contact his employer (HR department) and ask about current pensions and death in service benefits.
He might also have old pensions from previous employement, but his current employer won't know about those, so you'd have to look for paperwork.

I would have expected that the funeral company would have some sort of finance facility to put this on hold until the estate is settled.

jh2009

Very sorry to hear of your loss.

When someone dies, their bank account is frozen. But I understand the funeral bill is the single expense banks will allow to be charged against the deceaseds bank account, assuming of course that there are funds in this. The rest of the funds are then frozen until the estate is dealt with. Check with the bank/funeral director as sure this is common practice.

In terms of pensions, then if there is no paperwork, but there is a suspected pension benefit somewhere from an old employer or employers, then at worst you could ring round any old employers asking for contact details for their pension schemes. All you would need to do then is to send that scheme your brothers date of birth, ni, etc and enquire if there are any benefits.

If you cant trace an employer then theres a Pensions tracing service thats free to use. Simply send them the name of the employer and they will supply you with the names of any pension schemes, with contact details, free of charge - http://www.thepensionservice.gov.uk/atoz/atozdetailed/pensiontracing.asp