Adulting - wills, life & disability insurance

[wanderingback]

Help me out.

We really should do our wills now that we have a child and aren’t married. So do I just ask friends for lawyer recommendations? I’m pretty sure a lawyer friend of mine said she did hers through Rocket Lawyer, but I’m guessing that’s not advised?

Life insurance- please someone tell me how to go about this. I remember hearing that there’s some type of life insurance that you shouldn’t get? Unfortunately my partner just had a tumor removed for cancer and has high blood pressure and is older than me, so I doubt he’d be able to get life insurance now?

Short/long term disability - probably should look in to this too? Again where do I start?

Thanks!!

[laterz]

If you or your partner are employed with benefits, I would look to see what your employer offers, or what you may already have.

If you are doing this outside of an employer, yes, I'd ask friends for recommendations. You want an Estate lawyer. We did ours last year and was about $6k all in - wills, medical directives, etc.

Life Insurance - probably want term life. And you are right - your partner will probably be denied. It sucks.

For insurance you can look on line for brokers or request quotes.

[pierogigirl]

It is possible to get life insurance with no medical questions, but you may have to belong to a union. Through my union, my spouse and I can each get $250,000 with no medical questions (higher amounts are available with medical questions).

If you happen to belong to a union, it's worth checking to see if your partner could qualify.

We had an estate attorney do our wills, power of attorney, and trusts. Since you have a child now, look into a trust for her. It gets set up to protect money you leave her if you die. Also, think about who you would want to raise her, if you both die, and then have a back up. My husband and I were surprised that we needed a back up for all the major "jobs" in our wills (executor, trust, guardian, etc). It was very stressful to do, but we felt so much relief when it was done.

[aprilsails]

If you are part of a professional organization or a university alumni you will likely get preferred life insurance rates through a group rate that they will offer. I have checked multiple times over the years but I can't beat the term life insurance rates that my husband and I have through my professional engineers association. I imagine something similar would exist for doctor's. Probably a good place to start.

For wills I asked around for recommendations from friends and family. They gave me a couple of names and I asked for pricing and what was included. We used an estate lawyer specifically. She happens to be my Mom's neighbour.

For the amount of life insurance to carry there are a few ways to decide. We talked with our financial planner who gave us the following guidelines:

Enough to pay off the mortgage (would enable us to live off one salary easily)
Enough to completely fund children's education savings.
Extra two years anticipated salary for the person to use (pay for nanny/cleaning service, or take a year off work,fully fund retirement etc). This is the flex money.

Our employers both pay out 2x annual salary, so the last line item is covered. So we just did the first two combined.

For disability, I went through my life insurance policy as an add-on to my employers disability. It's not a huge plan because the options are all super expensive.

[wildrice]

I've been able to take out life insurance on my H in the past through my employer. It's usually a small amount (like 10k, not a salary replacement level) but it's better than nothing if I had to deal with death related expenses. Usually with employer sponsored plans you don't get denied for pre-existing conditions. So I would start there for your partner. I am not 100% sure if you have to be married, but I think most employee plans these days include domestic partners.

I don't know anything about the rest. I've been dragging my feet on a will for years. We really need to do that one of these days.

[daisycat]

Life insurance - my DH had cancer right after we were married, so he has always just done the max that he could get (without a medical exam) through his employer. If you belong to a credit union, AAA, or alumni association, those often have group deals where you can get life insurance up to certain limits with no medical exam. For this, I believe you want term life insurance, and not the whole life insurance.

As for a will, definitely get a lawyer. Ask around to friends and co-workers for a recommendation. (This is a good reminder for me as we need to get one - DS is only 9 and we've been talking about this since he was born.)

[wanderingback]

Oops, I guess I should have added some to my OP.

My partner is self-employed so no way to do any of this through his employer. I am not self employed but I might be in the next 5 years. I know I do have some life insurance through my employer but I think we’d want more if something were to happen to me, same with disability.

Thanks all for info so far!

[gt7301b]

Wills - I asked around and searched the Internet to find the individual who did ours.  I emailed several and got quotes, much like if I was looking for a contractor to do work on the house.  The thing that sold me was she was relatively inexpensive and came to our home. 

Life Insurance - We used a service like selectquote.com.  I just picked the cheapest term life option, they were more than willing to give a quote without doing the medical exam.  It actually didn't take that long to do once I stopped putting off getting it started.  I think you mentioned your partner is a musician, it looks like there any some musician's unions that your partner might be able to join.  It would at least be worth looking into coverage through a group policy.  A quick search brought up this one:  www.nashvillemusicians.org/

Not sure on the short/long term disability

[sadlebred]

Disability is expensive. I had a LTD personal policy for a few years. I think it was about $1200/year for minimal coverage, and it didn't start for 16 weeks after being sick/injured. If you can buy up at work from say 50% to 60%, it's worth every penny when you have to use it. It might be useful to have a "sick/disablity" savings account where you put a bit of money every month. This is separate from an e-fund unless you already have 6 months of living expenses.

[melmel4854]

I asked my financial advisor for recommendations on a lawyer to do my will etc. I loved him so much I recommended him to my parents and my cousin.

[awkwardpenguin]

Most physicians I know have sizable same-profession disability insurance. I think you can get it through your specialty organization? Definitely ask around.