Life Insurance Lawyer Maine
Our Maine life insurance lawyers handle delayed life insurance claims, denied life insurance claims, beneficiary disputes, and interpleader lawsuits. Call us today for a free consultation. You need to call to collect! Call us at 800-330-2274 for a free consultation.
Maine Denied Life Insurance Claims Recently Settled
- Mutual Security Life coronavirus denial $203,000.00
- Mass shooting death denial $150,000.00
- Inter-American Life COVID-19 denied $105,000.00
- Denied SGLI claim change in beneficiary $406,400.00
- Ameriprise wrong age on application $30,000.00
- Executive Life power of attorney change $77,000.00
- First Capital Life felony exclusion claim $128,000.00
- Iowa Farm Life suicide gun accident won $175,000.00
- American Standard Life alcohol exclusion $202,500.00
- FG Life lapse of policy two month time $31,000.00
- NEA Life chronic illness exclusion won $10,000.00
- Globe denial material misrepresentation $109,250.00
- Iowa Farm Life denial of benefits resolved $502,000.00
- SGLI claim wife and ex dispute won $400,000.00
- American General suicide exclusion $213,800.00
- Equitable nonpayment of premium $103,000.00
- Denial of FEGLI claim benefits won $409,300.00
- Lewiston interpleader lawsuit resolved $740,000.00
- Maine denied life insurance claim $921,500.00
- FEGLI appeal resolved in three weeks $154,000.00
- Denied AD&D claim suicide case won $920,000.00
- Biddeford long delay of benefits obtained $950,000.00
- Auburn Maine material misrepresentation $821,000.00
- AIG divorce ex-spouse against spouse $319,300.00
- Accidental Death & Dismemberment $750,000.00
- Hartford drug exclusion opioid death $204,650.00
- Bangor divorce settlement court order $350,000.00
- AIG interpleader beneficiary dispute $560,000.00
- Prudential denial of AD&D policy $526,000.00
- ERISA appeal life insurance benefits $144,000.00
- Denied life insurance claim Maine $815,300.00
- New Jersey Life denial of benefits $270,000.00
- USAA Life dispute among family $720,000.00
- Standard autoerotic asphyxiation $320,000.00
- Reliance Standard sickness exclusion $210,000.00
- Maine divorce settlement life insurance $500,000.00
- Portland ambiguous language resolved $911,000.00
- Gerber denial felony exclusion $106,000.00
Maine Life Insurance Law
There are few more dangerous forces in business than greed. Unfortunately, however, greed can strike almost any industry and can wreak havoc for the unsuspecting. The life insurance industry is rife with greed.
Take, for example, the very manner in which life insurance companies conduct business. The goal of every life insurance company is to collect the greatest amount of premiums from the greatest amount of policyholders. That would be all fine and good if life insurers then routinely paid out death benefits when those premium-paying policyholders died.
That’s not always what happens. Instead, the insurance companies hire armies of lawyers whose sole job is to concoct phony reasons to deny valid claims against those policies. They do this because the fewer claims they have to pay out, the greater their profits. As lawyers who specialize in the wrongful denial of life insurance claims, we see insurance companies engage in these illicit tactics every day.
To add insult to injury, the greed doesn’t stop at the corporate level. Some life insurance agents, themselves motivated by greed and high pressure to sell policies, engage in tactics that are every bit as harmful to the consumer. This article explores the circumstances surrounding one such agent, and the disastrous impact he had on policyholders in his small town. While we typically like to report on cases where a policy beneficiary triumphed against a bogus claim denial by a life insurer, this article is more of a cautionary tale for those who may be in the process of obtaining insurance.
Handling the life insurance application process
With some limited exceptions, nearly all life insurance policies require the policyholder to undergo an application process before a policy can issue. While the thoroughness of that process varies from company to company (and policy to policy), it typically involves some level of investigation into the applicant’s health history. In most cases, that investigation involves a detailed health questionnaire, followed by a simple physical examination.
The requirement of truthfulness in the application process cannot be understated. A life insurance policy, at its core, is a legal contract. Contracts must be premised on the truth. Otherwise, the party who was lied to during contract negotiations may later be able to rescind the contract.
In the life insurance context, that means that a policy applicant must give the insurance company truthful information about his health history. If he does not, and later dies of an undisclosed medical condition, the insurer may be able to avoid its obligation to pay a death benefit to policy beneficiaries. Fortunately, most people understand this and are truthful in answering questions about their health.
Beware of answering life insurance policy questionnaires
As noted above, insurance agents can be under tremendous pressure to sell policies. This may be because they are paid a commission based on a percentage of premiums, or simply because they want to get ahead within their agency by selling more policies than anyone else. Regardless of the motivation, some life insurance agents play some pretty dirty tricks to meet their policy quotas.
Such was the case with one agent named Tim. Tim’s game was relatively simple. Every time he met a new client who wanted to purchase a life insurance policy, Tim would set up a phone call with that person to go over the extensive health questionnaire required by the insurance companies he represented. Tim asked each client to set aside one to two hours for the call. During that call, Tim would read each question on the application aloud to the client, and then record their answers on an application form that would be submitted to the insurance company. Tim touted this process as “gold standard customer service.”
The only problem was, Tim didn’t always record the client’s answers to the questions correctly. He knew, for example, that if a client reported a history of diabetes, heart disease, or cancer, the insurance company was unlikely to issue a policy. Consequently, Tim would not receive a commission for his work. Therefore, even if a client did report a serious medical condition to him during the call, Tim would purposefully fail to report it on the form, a policy would issue, and Tim would be credited for the sale.
A series of denied life insurance claims
This process worked very well for Tim until his clients started passing away. For example, Tim submitted an application for one client who admitted to him during the call that he had been under a doctor’s care for heart disease for over a year. Tim, however, never noted that information on the form that went to the insurer. When the client died of a heart attack just over a year after the policy issued, the insurance company undertook a medical investigation.
It didn’t take much for the insurance company to discover the client’s history of serious heart-related health problems. The insurance company filed a lawsuit to rescind the policy without paying the death benefit because, it argued, the policy had been issued based on fraudulent information. When the court granted that rescission, the policyholder’s beneficiaries lost out on the death benefit that was intended for them.
In short order, other similar cases arose involving this same agent. While we would like to report that the courts showed mercy on the unsuspecting beneficiaries, that was simply not the case. The court found that the policyholder was ultimately responsible for verifying the truth of the information it submitted to the insurance company. By failing to review Tim’s form, they failed to ensure the truthfulness of the application.
Portland life insurance lawyer
Lewiston life insurance lawyer
The point of this story is simple: you must be in charge of your own life insurance application. Don’t let an agent or anyone else submit the application for you. If have questions about the application process or have had a claim denied in a manner you feel is wrongful, please call us today. We’re here to help.