life insurance beneficiary

[megmicwil]

What is the name of your state? MN

I am the beneficiary on a life insurance policy that my father took out less than 2 years ago. He recently passed away and the insurance company sent me a claimant statementto fill out and return. The insurance compnay has informed me that the policy is in it's contesible period and that I need to provide my fathers medical history for the past 10 years to get them to process, review and determine if I am eligible to receive any of the money from the policy. Is this correct? Do I have to submit this medical information or do they have ways of tracking it down? The reason I ask is because I live in MN and the policy and my father lived in TX. I am finding it VERY difficult to get the medical history for the past 10 years and am not even sure that I will be able to.

Please Help!

 

[Dandy Don]

What was your father's cause of death?

I'm hoping that an insurance company professional will respond to your query with an answer about whether it is advisable to go ahead and respond to the insurance company's request for you to provide medical records. I'm a bit puzzled as to why they would ask you to do it, since it is common knowledge that insurance companies have access to medical records on computer by subscribing to the databases, but there might be current or recent changes to privacy laws that might restrict what they can or cannot do. I would think that under normal circumstances there would be no harm for you to provide that information if you could find it.

You may want to talk to any of your father's friends or relatives in the city where he lived to try to find out the name of his physicians, or place a small classified ad in the newspaper (of the city where he lived) to ask for anyone's help in providing that information. Or, talk to any doctor in your city or any doctor in Texas and they can give you guidelines on how and where to request a person's medical records or exactly who can and can't request such. There is a company called Medical Information Bureau that provides such records and there may be other companies that do it as well, but you would have better luck talking to a physician who actually treated your father. I suspect they are going to be looking for some type of pre-existing condition and try to find out whether your father reported that truthfully on his insurance application, but somehow I think everything is going to turn out fine and that hopefully you will be receiving the payout if they don't find some technicality to disqualify.


DANDY DON IN OKLAHOMA ([email protected])

 

[blameshifting]

The beneficiary of an insurance policy is under no obligation to do the insurance companies legwork. If they want medical records they can go dig them up themselves.

If the insurance policy if sufficiently large it would be advisable to contact an attorney to protect your interests.

 

[Dandy Don]

Yes, I agree that she is not responsible for doing the legwork, but my only concern is that if she doesn't do it, the insurance company can continually stall on paying her claim or continue to deny it. Perhaps a consultation with an attorney who specializes in insurance matters or business law would be wise, but she should also consider filing a complaint with her state insurance commissioner to see if he can investigate this to verify whether they are legally correct in asking for these records or not.

DANDY DON IN OKLAHOMA ([email protected])