What happens to people who die if they don't have life insurance?

Question

What happens to people who die if they don't have life insurance?

Answer 1

Well, there's no payout from a life insurance company - the family just does the best they can with what they have.  MOST people in the USA die without active life insurance.

Answer 2

well, they still die ??  It's not like collectors can get anything from them anymore !  However, their family would be responsible for funeral services and what not .....

Answer 3

AS you can read from all the above answers, they die.  They die and any living relatives are held responsible for picking up the funeral costs, casket costs, and any outstanding bills (House Mortgage, Credit Cards, Vehicle Loans, Student Loans, ect.).  Most people in the world die without having life insurance, even though, as a cost ratio, the payout is usually bigger than the amount paid into the policy. ...usually...

Answer 4

First off, they cease to live. Second they only leave their estate to their heirs. If the estates liabilities are greater than the assets, then the heirs get nothing as the creditors must be paid. Otherwise the heirs get to split the estate as per the will, assuming there is one.

Answer 5

My grandpa died and we found out that he didn't have life insurance and made no provisions for anything.  All of my aunts and uncles and most of the grandkids ended up chipping in for his funeral, but after that there will bills that my grandma was being held responsible for and we ended up having to pay those along with his outstanding hospital bills.  Eventually we ended up having to sell my grandma's house because none of us could afford to take over the payments and neither could she.  It was a big mess, they had been married so long, you would have thought that he would have made sure that she was taken care of after he was gone, but that isn't the way it worked.  Shortly after that my husband and I both went and got policies.

Answer 6

what do u mean? what happens to people who die without life insurance? They're dead. what else can happen?? the only thing is they leave behind a family with a funeral cost bill.

Answer 7

Their families pick up the tab of burial, or they end up interred in community ("Potters Fields") or charity plots (sometimes donated by churches or cemetaries).   I think some local governments have funds set aside to provide for these minimal burials.

Answer 8

I'm not going with the easy joke - let's get serious for a moment.  

First: yes, as has been said the family they leave behind gets stuck with the burial costs.  There's a lot more that can happen though - the family they leave behind can lose their home, because income isn't coming in anymore.  Kids are uprooted from all they've known, because the other parent has to leave to get some work.  Oh, did I mention that the surviving spouse or loved one often has to now also figure out how to come up with money for day care if the kids are small - often that day care eats up most of what the living parent is bringing in now.

I'm not even going to get into what happens if both of the couple die at once in an accident -- then they often leave behind probate challenges for the lving members as well.

I'm continuously fascinated by folks who make sure to get their car covered by insurance, but they won't insure themselves.  Your chances of getting into a car accident are what 1 in 100 or 1 in a 1000 or something.  Your chances of dying are 1 in 1, it' s only a matter of time for that. The only variable is that we don't know when that's going to happen -- someone MAY go thru their whole life without a vehicle accident.  NO ONE ever goes thru their whole life without finally dying.

Now having ranted on - I hope no one in your family is in that situation.  For much of my life I was a teacher.  It's horrendously sad to see someone die and then have to deal with living family members who need to put on a car wash or other event just to be able to afford to bury a loved one.

The funeral parlors are oh-so comforting, but they want the check in their hot little hands before they will commit to a burial.