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Talking About Life Insurance
The First Step to Protect Your Family By Katherine Bontrager
It isn't an easy topic to talk about. It's awkward, heavy and at times confusing. And it most certainly isn't the first thing on your mind – after all, that position is firmly taken up by your new little one. But life insurance is incredibly important, and all new parents need to assess or even re-assess how they'd be covered if tragedy were to strike.
Robin Nolan of Carson City, Nev., knew how vital life insurance was – her father worked in finance and real estate and educated his daughter early on about the importance of being covered. "And before we got married, my husband, Andy, and I met with the minister," she says. "She recommended an 'advance health care directive' in case one of us had something catastrophic happen, so immediately, in the middle of all this happy planning, we were forced to think about reality and make some hard choices."
Since the two were already discussing a living will, talking about life insurance wasn't too much of a stretch. "I had a policy from when I was a teenager, but when my husband and I got married we decided to get him a life insurance policy at the same time we were getting the advance health care directive drawn up," says Nolan.
The discussion was an easy one for the Nolans – not to mention timely, considering they got pregnant soon after their wedding day. "We just had to have it so if anything happened, the children would be taken care of," she says. "We would need some sustainable income to get through a death, working or not, and to provide for the little ones."
Luckily, Nolan worked for an insurance lawyer at the time, so the family was familiar with the different companies and varying insurance choices. "I simply contacted the guy at my life insurance company, evaluated a variety of options and we determined that for Andy, we would 'rent' life insurance – which is what term life is – with a premium paid quarterly for protection."
