Travel insurance cover if partners grandfather dies or close to death.

Korkyb

Hi all

My daughter and her boyfriend / partner are due to fly off on a package holiday in 2 weeks. They have booked the holiday as a couple.

Unfortunately my father in law (my daughters grandfather) has deteriorated healthwise suddenly and is now terminally ill / palliative and its anyones guess whether he will die in 2 days, 2 weeks or 2 months but we do know it is likely to be very soon.

Both my daughter and her boyfriend have seperate annual travel insurance policies and while I'm confident that if it did come to it that my daughter will be covered by her own insurance I'm not so sure about her boyfriend.

He has a Staysure "Annual Multitrip Comprehensive" policy which runs from June 23 to June 24.

The holiday was obviously booked prior to knowing about my father in laws health prognosis.

At present if the situation remains "stable" they are planning to continue with their trip but my question is what would my daughters boyfriend situation be insurance wise if things deteriorated to the point where my daughter decided that she didnt want to travel.

We have called Staysure today but couldnt get a clear answer as their claims department is closed for the next few days.

Thanks for any advice.

Mark_d

I am not confident that your daughter would be covered, given that she is or should reasonably have been aware of your father-in-laws health situation prior to the trip.  I would suggest calling the insurance company to check whether she will be covered if she proceeds with the holiday and whether she will be covered for cancellation losses if the holiday needs to be cancelled.

Since your daughter and her boyfriend have separate travel insurance policies, would it be reasonable to assume that they are not in a long established relationship?  If this is the case then the boyfriend is certainly not a close relative of your father-in-law and I would doubt he would be covered even if your daughter is.

Marvel1

From experience, chances are your Daughter will not be covered she is aware, let them know.

Korkyb

She is aware now but was not aware at time of booking the holiday and had no more reason to believe that her grandfather was about to become palliative than anyone else who has a grandparent.

She and her boyfriend are in a long term relationship (2+ years) but do not live at same address & have not taken out joint policys because their annual policy expiration dates just havent matched up.

Hopefully it is likely to be a non issue as I think the chances of them having to cancel the holiday are slim as we are now getting to the point where if he was to die in the next week or 2 then we could arrange the funeral for after her return and if he did die while she was away we wouldnt want her to return home early.

Brie

They will both need to check the T&Cs of the policies to see what counts as "close family" for the purposes of cancellation.  Daughter is likely to be ok in that she didn't know when booking and I would like to assume a grandfather is considered as close family.  Boyfriend is unlikely to be covered as he has no connection to your FiL other than in the capacity of perhaps some elderly gent he has met any number of times.  

That said - best to check with both companies.  I was told a number of years back that my cover wouldn't be liable to a claim should my own father die because I lived in the UK and he did not and therefore they wouldn't consider him to be close family.  I had to escalate this as there was nothing in their T&Cs that defined what close meant and they agreed eventually that the assumption should be based on blood relationship rather than distance between 2 homes.  

unforeseen

Boyfriend wouldn't be covered, even if he was married to your daughter.
Direct descent goes down to grandparents but in-laws only go down to parents

https://help.staysure.co.uk/hc/en-us/articles/8724992001425-Who-is-a-close-relative-for-travel-insurance-#:~:text=For travel insurance, a close,Grandchildren

DullGreyGuy

unforeseen said:

Boyfriend wouldn't be covered, even if he was married to your daughter.
Direct descent goes down to grandparents but in-laws only go down to parents

Some policies allow the insured to cancel if their travelling companion would have had a valid claim under the policy had they been insured by it and are now no longer travelling. Unfortunately StaySure are not one of those.