childinsurance

Do you have life insurance? Do you have life insurance for your children?

Due to circumstances the past month, we discovered that even though our intentions were right, we didn't follow through.

Our son was killed in an accident June 10, 2005. We adopted him in December, 2002. We had just gotten new life insurance for Kevin and I and our 8 children. At that time, we were waiting for Ammon to come from California. The agent told us to wait until he was here and everything was done so we could get him on the insurance. After he was finalized (don't know if I would wait that long again!), we contacted the agent. The papers never showed up, and several months later we realized that and called again. Both Kevin and I remember filling out paperwork, but apparently we never sent it in, or they never received it. We thought it was all done, never paid attention to whether or not the premium changed, and didn't think about it again.

A week after Ammon died, we finally had time to contact the insurance. To my horror, he was not listed with our children as a covered child. We looked and looked to see if we overlooked some other document that would have him on it. There was none. The insurance company had a piece of paper in our file with his name and social security number on it, but nothing else. No premiums were ever paid for a policy for him (it was only just over a dollar a month), so no benefit could be paid.

Ammon was adopted through the State of California's foster care system and came with a subsidy and a medical card. If that had not been the case, we would be in real trouble. As most adoptions do not have this, I feel it is very important to help other parents understand the need for life insurance on your child. Ammon's medical bills are over $15,000. Even with insurance, that would have been a huge chunk of money to come up with. The funeral home we worked with was amazing and kept reducing prices and throwing in services for free. Even at that, it was almost $3000. The plot was also very inexpensive, as my daughter still lives in the community we just moved from and got a resident rate of $500...with $250 more to open and close. All in all, it was almost $4000, which is very inexpensive. We got a wonderful donation from a good friend to cover most of the costs of the marker/headstone. One of my brothers and one of my sisters bought the little suit to bury him in.

How do you fit a funeral into your budget? Unfortunately, we are living paycheck to paycheck and there is no slush fund available for those kind of expenses. We have had 2 cars blow head gaskets in the past 2 months and another one seized the a/c compressor that the serpentine belt goes around, so that car doesn't work. Life never throws anything convenient at you.

Luckily, we remembered Kevin's accident insurance...it had a death benefit of $5000, which will be very helpful.

It it literally pennies a day to insure your child. If you don't have insurance...do it today. If you do...or think you do, double check it today! We never ever thought we would ever use it...

We have been greatly blessed by many friends and family that have given us money to help with expenses. But besides the costs, themselves, there is missed work, extra gas money, and tons of other little things that add up. Be prepared! Money is not something you want to worry about at a time like this.

Pam Banta