Life insurance

[007girl]

If a life insurance check (West Virginia) is not cashed within a specific amount of time, will the ins.co. then locate another family member for it to go to? The beneficiary listed is next of kin which would have been the spouse. The check did go to the spouse but was delivered to her by her deceased husbands employer and was in the deceased name. She was unable to cash it, so after yrs. of this check being uncashed could the employer have had a stop payment issued on the check and had a new check issued to them to cash? Is this legal for the employer to cash a check that should had been given to the next of kin? If not, what can we do?

 

[ALawyer]

The first thing she should do is contact the employer's human resources or benefits department and ask them to contact the insurance company that issued the check and ask what to do.

Most smaller policies have a facility of payment provision that is designed to make it simple to get paid. Here she was VERY foolish for not asking sooner, but I doubt that it is too late to ask now.