Child Insurance - When does it make sense?

Child insurance is a subject often avoided and a very delicate issue in itself. However, it can make sense from a financial standpoint, depending on the current situation in your family.

In general, life insurance is used to protect a persons family in the event of an untimely death. If the individual who earns the most dies, how will you replace the lost income? In most cases, young couples do not have big enough reserves  to sustain this loss and without life insurance providing a "safety net", the spouse can be forced to sell the house you both worked so hard for and experience a major drop in living standards.When analyzing the life insurance needs of your family, the first thing to do is to insure the primary-income earners. This is self-explanatory, as in most instances children are not income earners. While a child’s death would have an unquantifiable emotional impact, it would not have a major financial impact. However, assuming that all of your main financial bases are well-covered, insuring a child can make sense and can also offer many benefit, especially long-term.For example, insuring a child at a young age guarantees that he or she has insurance now and has the ability to get insurance in the future. This will protect the child’s ability to obtain insurance against future health problems, such as asthma or cancer; it will also protect the child against high-risk occupations such as becoming a firefighter or pilot. Most life-insurance policies give you the option of adding a guaranteed insurability rider which allows the child to upgrade his/her insurance in the future, without a medical. This is a key point and should not be overlooked.

Permanent policies also allow your child to lock in at very favourable rates and can be paid up in a limited number of years. The policy can generate cash value which is available in the case of an emergency or to help supplement the child’s retirement income.

If you have hereditary health issues, insuring your child has an extra added importance, as it creates a safety-net against the child developing health problems in the future.  A child who eventually has a family of his/her own may have developed health issues in the future and as a result, it might be very hard or impossible to obtain life insurance policies or they would be with an extra added cost.