Getting seperate insurance to cover life threating conditions

csa

Hi,


I've just claimed on my critical life cover. Although the mortgage has now been paid off, and we have life cover, I'm wondering if I should be looking into whether I/my husband should/can take out other critical cover? If my husband was to become ill, we would struggle to pay the bills on my income. Is it worth looking at getting some kind of cover for him?

Weighty1

Unfortunately it is exceedingly difficult to arrange additional cover for incapacity after suffering a critical illness. The exception to this tends to be when the original condition was cancer, some providers will allow a new critical illness plan with a full cancer exclusion, however, you normally need the original diagnosis to have been quite a few years beforehand.

The cover which is most likely to be feasible is short term income protection cover. Similar to the old style, Accident, Sickness & Unemployment cover (with or without the unemployment cover tagged on) it doesn't normally require any medical underwriting up front so people with quite serious health conditions in their past can apply for it. The main thing you'd need to be aware of that these types of plans normally exclude pre-existing conditions. The better ones will cover pre-existing conditions once the plan has been in force for 12-months, but some of them always exclude conditions which the applicant was taking treatment for, been to the doctor about or suffered symptoms of in the 24-months preceeding the application being made.

Hope this helps.

busicat

Hi csa
Sorry to hear you've been poorly enough to claim, but glad you were covered!

If you would struggle without hubby's income I would think definitely worth some cover for him...but income protection insurance can be better than critical illness cover, which as you know only pays if you get one of the listed illnesses and isn't related to ability to work. Income protection is for giving some replacement income when you can't work due to illness/accident of whatever sort (not self-inflicted!) It's wider ranging as a lot more illnesses stop people working than are listed for critical illness cover. And you can get versions that keep paying to age 65 if the illness stops work that long, so it's more expensive. But the critical cover's nice for giving an up front lump sum to help you cope with whatever you need if he's hit by a "biggie".

There's a lot of choices involved in getting the ideal combination of cover (and best company) for what you can afford, so well worth getting it through a financial adviser, like Lifesearch, who mse mention.