Can I Buy Life Insurance for My Father?
How Would the Life Insurance Buying Process Work?
First things first: the insured person – your father – will need to participate in the buying process. It’s not possible to buy life insurance for someone else without their knowledge or participation, in other words. If you were asking “can I buy life insurance for my father” with the intent of completing the process by yourself, that’s not going to be possible.
You can help him through the process, but it’s not legal to submit an application without the insured person’s authentic signature (a physical “wet” signature or a digital eSignature). The insured person must be capable of providing consent. If your father is in the advanced stages of dementia, for example, consent is not considered possible to give.
Your father may also need to take a free medical exam, if required by the insurer:
Policies that require an exam: These are often less expensive because the exam gives the insurer a more complete and up-to-date picture of your father’s heath, which is what they need to price the policy appropriately. The application will contain a range of health and lifestyle questions your father would need to answer, as the insured. It’s fine to have someone help him complete the application, whether that’s you or one of our application specialists, but your father would need to provide the answers.
No exam policies: These only require an application, which consists of a medical questionnaire. One type of coverage, guaranteed issue, will have a much shorter questionnaire since it’s intended for people with some medical issues (potentially severe). Guaranteed issue policies will ask a short series of questions to make sure the applicant isn’t already diagnosed with a terminal illness or advanced dementia, or residing in a nursing home. Questionnaires for policies that are not guaranteed issue (term, whole life, etc.) will be more extensive, asking about the insured person’s health history, family health history, job, lifestyle, and more. Your father would need to be able to answer these questions, although someone else – you, or one of our application specialists – could fill out the actual application for him.
To complete the application process, the life insurance broker or company would need your father to physically sign or digitally sign his application. If you’re acting as the policy owner and payor, you could handle the paperwork required to place the policy in force (make it active) after the completion of the underwriting process.
Rather ask a real person, “Can I buy life insurance for my father?” Call us at (800) 521-7873 or email us at info@lifequote.com for one-on-one advice! Or click the button below to get started with a term life quote.
