Joint life policy...need your help

reece161

I took out a joint life policy over 30 years ago with my then wife, but we divorced after 5 years. I kept on the monthly premium payments but my ex-wife re-married and moved abroad 25 years ago and I have no means of contact. I now need to surrender the policy due to financial circumstances and ReAssure, who took on the policy from L&G tell me there is no way for me alone to surrender the policy as it is in joint names. If I stop paying the premiums, i will lose the £5k surrender value. There surely must be a way to release a policy when one of the named polciy holders (who has made no contributions to the premiums for the past 25 yeras) is not traceable??

Can anyone help?
ReAssure initially said I need a statutory order but on checking, they then reversed their stance and said a statutory order cannot apply to a life policy.

MWT

You would seem to have a vested interest in actually tracing her.

Obviously this should have been sorted out in the divorce, and of course if you have lost touch with her completely you do not even know if she is in fact still alive which could have a material impact on the value of the policy if it was written as 'first death'...

Old_Lifer

Presumably this is a whole life policy as it has been in force for  'over' 30 years and is ongoing  and  given that length of time,  the surrender value is only £5000.       If you were joint owners at the start and this has not changed, you will still be joint owners.  Either joint owner can pay the premiums.    When you divorced the policy would have had very little surrender value and that may be the reason why the ownership of the policy was not addressed at that time.

What happens if you stop paying the premiums depends on the type of policy:

If you have a conventional policy,  the policy will usually be held in force under Non-Forfeiture Regulations for a year and then converted to paid-up with a reduced sum assured.

If you have a unit-linked policy,  a policy condition will often allow the policy to remain in force for the full sum assured  with the ongoing costs taken from the investment pot, until  the money runs out and the policy terminates without value.

May I suggest that you read the policy document