Insurance After Split

Anteater45

Good morning people, i am hoping i have posted this in the right forum. My partner and i have split up just recently. We are in the process of sorting out the bills etc. We have our own place which she and our son are going to stay living in for the time being. We have 3 insurance policies running at the moment and they are as follows:

Policy 1 Life Assurance £60000 covering ex and myself = £8 per month.

Policy 2 Level Term Assurance £50000 covering ex and myself, £12500 son = £24 per month.

Policy 3 Level Term Assurance £78000 covering ex and myself, £7500 son = £39 per month.

We have £58000 outstanding on our mortgage with 12 years left. I am after some advice on what to do with the policies. Do i cancel them and set some up individually for myself and get my ex to do the same? Do i keep them running? I am quite good on other financial matters but always get confused on insurance!! Many thanks for looking and any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Annisele

We're not allowed to give 'advice' here (against the forum rules), but my opinion in a case like yours - where somebody doesn't really know what they need - is that they should go and see a financial adviser to talk through the options. I wouldn't cancel anything without taking advice; depending on your circumstances you might find that you can't take out new policies and you'd be left without any life cover at all.

I think some of the things you need to think about might be:

• Is anybody other than your son going to be financially dependent on you (eg your ex or a new partner)?
• Who is going to be responsible for your current mortgage in future? If your ex, then you might not need life assurance to cover it.
• If you died, who would you want the life assurance money to go to? As things stand, if the policies are joint then the money will go to your ex - and given that you have a son together, that might be what you want. If you don't want that, you'll have to change something.
• Are you and your ex in (pretty much) the same state of health that you were when you took out the policies? If not, then you might not be able to take out new policies - but your existing insurer might (or might not) have an option allowing you to split them between you.

Anteater45

Obviously this was posted a long time ago, but here's an update. My ex and son are still living in the house and i am currently living with my parents. The bills are 70/30 (me paying the 70) but ex has informed me that i am no longer her next of kin. She has left everything in my son's name. Now i am actually thinking of cancelling the insurance policies and setting one up to cover just myself. Am i being a bit hasty by doing this?