When a family member dies, the pain of loss is joined by an avalanche of legal and administrative procedures that must be fulfilled in a certain order. Therefore, between the mourning and the paperwork, there is a document that runs a serious risk of not being processed: the application for life insurance certificates.
This certificate indicates whether the deceased had contracted any type of life insurance. This, which at first glance may seem obvious, can be a procedure that involves the loss of thousands of euros. for the heirs for not claiming compensation from the insurers.
The failure that, surprisingly, is very common. As Manuel Hernández García, lawyer and director of Vilches Abogados, said, in a video from his YouTube channel, not requesting this life insurance certificate is one of the most common mistakes in inheritances.
“On many occasions, families do not request life insurance certificates,” recalls the lawyer. The curious fact is that “insurance companies have an obligation to transmit this information about the deceased’s life insurance to state agencies.” That is, insurers are obliged to communicate in which insurance policies a specific person appears as a beneficiary, but they are not obliged to notify the heirs directly.
A simple procedure but not for the impatient. The file in which all life insurance beneficiaries are collected is called the Registry of Death Coverage Insurance Contracts. It was created by Law 20/2005 and today it is managed by the Ministry of Justice. Anyone interested can request the insurance certificate and it includes the name and surname and what policies the deceased had in force.
However, and this is one of the reasons why this certificate is often left behind in the inheritance process, it cannot be requested until after fifteen business days since death. Any attempt to apply earlier will result in your automatic denial.
The procedure is done through the form 790 and can be processed online, by mail or in person, with the death certificate at hand. The registry responds within a maximum of seven business days. Some death insurance policies include administrative coverage in which they are responsible for requesting this certificate.
Five years, not one more. We come to one of the most delicate parts of the process since insurance companies are obliged to indicate in that certificate what insurance each deceased has, but not to notify the heirs who are beneficiaries of it.
As indicated by the insurer Aegonhe article 23 of the Insurance Contract Law establishes that heirs have a maximum period of five years from death to claim life insurance. After that time, the money simply remains in the hands of the insurer.
Sure, how sure? The key is that much of that “forgotten” money does not come from life insurance policies themselves, but from “invisible” policies included in third-party services. Credit cards, banking and financial loan services, home insurance, vehicle insurance, which in addition to offering the main coverage, also allocate part of the coverage to insuring the service provider.
According to the last Social Insurance Report, In Spain, 22 million people have taken out risk life insurance and many people are unaware that they have this coverage.
Notaries as a last resort. The Registry creation life insurance also imposed an additional obligation for notaries, who must include the certificate from the Insurance Registry of the deceased before the award of the inheritance and must warn the heirs if there is any policy that covers said death so that it is recorded.
Image | Vilches lawyersUnsplash (Romain Dancre)
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