by KD » Sun Aug 15, 2010 02:55 am
I recently was told that my father had a life insurance policy he intended to go to his six children from his first marriage. His third and last wife told my brother that the policy was cancelled and we would receive nothing. I suspect, if there was a policy, she may have changed the beneficiary to herself shortly before my father died. He was quite ill before he passed. Is there any way we can find out if a policy did exist and do we have an legal rights to contest it?
Posted: Mon Sep 20, 2010 11:32 pm Post Subject:
If you live in or around the original colonies, Wisconsin is North East.
Max being a Californian has no excuse ;)
Wow, I'm shocked how this post took off.
Drop it in, shake it up, walk away. :D
Posted: Tue Sep 21, 2010 03:08 am Post Subject:
If you live in or around the original colonies, Wisconsin is North East.
???Why do they call Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and the surrounding environs "The Midwest?" Maybe that's the reason Northwestern Mutual (in Milwaukee WI) chose their name in 1857. I didn't want to have to name them, but oh, well. Now it's out in the open.
Wow, I'm shocked how this post took off.
Me, too.
Lots of spirited discussion, but no one else manages to back up their contentions with substance, just anecdotal conjecture.
Posted: Tue Sep 21, 2010 03:13 am Post Subject:
Why do they call Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and the surrounding environs "The Midwest?
They call it "The Midwest" because it is the midwest. Therefore, Northwestern Mutual isn't in the Northwest because as you have just correctly pointed out, it is in the Midwest.
Posted: Tue Sep 21, 2010 03:13 am Post Subject:
Why do they call Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and the surrounding environs "The Midwest?
They call it "The Midwest" because it is the midwest. Therefore, Northwestern Mutual isn't in the Northwest because as you have just correctly pointed out, it is in the Midwest.
Posted: Tue Sep 21, 2010 03:32 pm Post Subject:
So if it's the Midwest, why is it the CENTRAL time zone?
I knew when I wrote my little cryptic about a "mutual life insurance company in the northwestern part of the US" that I wasn't talking about the Pacific northwest. I knew exactly where NML was located. Those who labeled me "geographically challenged" missed the whole point of the clue.
And Pacific Life is no longer a California-domiciled insurer, they moved their domicile to Nebraska, of all places, in 2006. I don't think there are too many whales breaching out in the cornfields, but they still use that image in their ads and as their logo.
I don't think they'll be changing their name to Cornbelt Mutual anytime soon. Besides, all their customer service is still based here in So Cal. And they're one of the best companies I've ever dealt with as far as customer service goes.
Posted: Tue Sep 21, 2010 08:42 pm Post Subject:
One final thought has come to me, as I'm writing material for a 2011 life insurance textbook revision, for those of you who are insisting that dividends have something to do with investment gains and not premiums paid. So here's a final "What If" from me to those of you who are so fond of hypothetical conjecture.
What if the insurance company has a great year collecting premiums, and receives $13 billion in premiums, but in the same year has net investment LOSSES of $0.01 or more, but still has divisible surplus that year amounting to $4.7 billion.
Now, please answer the question: In that year, what is responsible for the divisible surplus? Premiums or investments? When policyowners receive their dividends, with what money have they been paid?
As an accounting measure, what allows the insurer to pay tax-free dividends, even in a year when investments result in gains (which is almost every year for most insurers because a large portion of their GA investments are in interest bearing securities), is that the total premiums received exceeds the insurer's net investment gains, and combined it results in a profitable year.
So what is being returned to policyowners is excess premiums paid -- even without all that money we still would have had a profitable year, the Board of Directors might say (but never does).
Posted: Thu Sep 23, 2010 02:11 am Post Subject:
for those of you who are insisting that dividends have something to do with investment gains and not premiums paid.
I never said that they had to do with investment gain and not premiums paid. I have said that the primary driver of a dividend scale is interest rates. When interest rates go up, dividends go up, but lag behind. When interest rates go down, dividend rates go down, but lag behind.
Dividends are available because a company has more revenue than expenses. It doesn't matter if this extra money is due to better investment returns than expected, favorable mortality, or lower expenses than expected.
Posted: Thu Sep 23, 2010 02:17 am Post Subject:
Now, please answer the question: In that year, what is responsible for the divisible surplus? Premiums or investments? When policyowners receive their dividends, with what money have they been paid?
Like always, they are receiving their dividends from the divisible surplus of the insurance company. Everything collected goes into the general account. They can be getting paid from gains of previous years.
Here's something to think about. Premiums aren't what give the insurance company the ability to pay a dividend. The premiums are based upon assumptions that will allow the insurance company to pay only what is guaranteed and not pay any dividends. The dividends, as you know, and as I mentioned in my last post, are derived from better than assumed mortality, better than assumed investment returns, and/or lower than assumed expenses.
Posted: Thu Sep 23, 2010 08:38 pm Post Subject:
Dividends are available because a company has more revenue than expenses.
And if the revenue (or the surplus) is entirely accounted for in the premiums, the dividends come from the same source.
Positive investment returns, better than expected mortality and expenses all permit premiums to be reduced. But since premiums in WL are preestablished based on conservative estimates, premiums are necessarily higher than needed. So the mutual insurer returns that "surplus" to its policyowners. The stock insurer either uses it to acquire more assets or distributes some of it to shareholders, or both.
Posted: Fri Sep 24, 2010 01:21 am Post Subject:
I don't think they'll be changing their name to Cornbelt Mutual anytime soon. Besides, all their customer service is still based here in So Cal. And they're one of the best companies I've ever dealt with as far as customer service goes.
X2, I've found few companies that were as awesome at customer service as Pac Life. Even though I don't really do any business with them anymore, I still give them props for having amazing customer service.
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