3 Important Life Events That Could Affect Your Insurance Policy

Photo of author

By Jacob Maslow

The U.S. health insurance market is now a regular fixation in news reports as legislation to repeal parts of Obamacare gets underway.  People have pitted strong arguments on both sides of the debate for and against the proposed changes in Obamacare. People are fixated on the power that the government wields in determining how insurance coverage affects the lives of the average American. Nonetheless, some personal decisions can have a bigger impact on your insurance than government actions. This article provides insights into three live events that could affect your insurance policies.

insurance-policy

Getting married

Getting married is an important life event – you have found your soulmate, you are in love, you hope to live happily ever after. It is easy to forget that getting married will trigger massive changes in your life amidst the euphoria of planning the perfect wedding. One of the areas of your life in which you’ll see the biggest changes after getting married is in the necessary changes you’ll need to make in your insurance policies.

You’ll need to update your health insurance to accommodate your spouse – the changes in the policy could be massive if either of you have special health challenges/needs. You’ll need to update your insurance policy to cover the personal belongings of your spouse. The policy you had before getting married only covers you personal belongings and the personal stuff of your spouse won’t be automatically covered in the event of a disaster. If you spouse will be driving your car, you’ll also need to review your auto insurance policy to include them as a policy holder.

Getting divorce or separated

If you are going through a rough patch in your marriage and a divorce or separation seems inevitable, it might be high time you started thinking about updating your insurance policies. Your health insurance will need to be updated to reflect your single/divorced/separated status so that you are not responsible for paying the insurance premiums of someone who is no longer in your life.

You may want to remove them from your auto insurance policy if they’ll no longer be driving your car. If the car goes to them in the course of the divorce, you’ll need to inform the auto insurance firm that you’ll no longer be responsible for the insurance premiums on the car.  When there’s a change in your marital status, there’ll probably be change in your living conditions; hence, you might need to update the property insurance to reflect the change in home ownership and residency.

Buying a home

Buying a home is another life-changing effect that could have the biggest impact on your insurance policies. Transitioning from being a tenant to becoming a homeowner will most likely increase your insurance premiums; however, the massive changes you should expect are not limited to insurance premiums.

To start with, you’ll need to discontinue your previous renters insurance policy otherwise, you’ll see the bill for an overdue premium payment even after you’ve moved out of the rented apartment. You’ll definitely need to buy a homeowner’s insurance policy. You should start shopping around for home insurance as soon as you are your mortgage is approved – don’t wait until you’ve closed the deal before buying home insurance. If the new home will require you to relocate across state borders, you’ll also need to find out how the relocation will affect your other insurance policies.

Images Courtesy of DepositPhotos