Stonebridge Life Insurance Does not pay if the policy holder dies before two years of having their policy Valley Forge, PA. Dallas, Texas

There are MANY different types of life insurance; consumers must know what they have bought and how it works.

The state of Texas has a two year contestible clause in life insurance, where the company has the right to investigate the doctor records of the insured to verify if all health questions on the application were answered truthfully. If death occurs within this two year period, and it is determined that false information was given on the application, the insurance company has the right to deny the claim and return all premiums paid.

There are also types of life insurance that state plainly that if death occurs during the first two years of the policy, the premiums paid will be returned. Some policies also pay interest on the premium paid.

In insurance and all other contracts, it is always up to the consumer to READ THE FINE PRINT! There is a page in all policies that shows the death benefit and/or cash value of a policy from Year 1 and forward.

I would encourage this lady's family to read the policy if they haven't by now.

It is very common to have a "waiting period" on Life Insurance Policies. Yes some companies and policies do not, and some policies have a different amount of time for this "waiting period".

Unfortunatly you have no way of knowing if she was verbally told or not or "She would never have purchased it" if she had known. When people buy insurance they don't want to think that they are going to die in a short period of time. If by some chance she did know this is a question she needed to ask and not rely on the agent to tell her. Insurance policies have a lot of clauses and exclusions and no agent is going to go over every single line. So it is the person's responsibility to be able to ask the questions or read the policy themselves. If they are not capable of that they need to have someone go over it with them. If the agent refuses then you need to get a 3rd party to do it and never sign anything until you understand what you are signing.

The only thing to suggest is go over that policy line by line. You can go in with the belief that if it is not in writing it does not exist. So if there is nothing in the policy declaration that states this waiting period you have a valid argument on that point. However, if there is then unfortunatly there is not much you will be able to do.