Home › Carriers › Liberty National

Liberty National Life Insurance Policy Help

Old policies, beneficiary updates, billing, lapse notices and knowing what you hold

Liberty National sells through career agents, people who represent the one company rather than shopping several, and it has been doing so for generations. A lot of its policies were bought in small amounts long ago, sometimes for a child, sometimes at a workplace, and often when an agent came round to the house. Policies like that get put in a drawer and stay there. The call usually comes when somebody clears out the drawer, or when a notice arrives about a payment, and nobody in the family can say for certain what the policy is or whether it still counts. Liberty National Life Insurance Company is an insurance subsidiary of Globe Life Inc.

Common reasons people call about a Liberty National policy

• Establishing whether an old policy is still in force. Coverage bought decades ago may still be active, may have lapsed, or may have been paid up. Those are three different situations, and only the company's records settle which one applies.
• A policy bought for a child who is now grown. Small policies taken out on children are common in this part of the market, and the grown child often knows nothing about it. Ownership, who may change it, and who receives the benefit are the questions that follow.
• Beneficiary designations that are out of date. People named years ago may have died, divorced out of the family, or simply stopped being the right choice. The insurer acts on the designation recorded on its own signed form, which is why this cannot be handled through a will.
• Payments and drafts. Where premiums were once collected in person and are now drafted from a bank, a change of account can break the arrangement silently. Reconnecting the payment is straightforward if it is caught before the contract's deadline passes.
• Lapse and reinstatement notices. These letters are written in insurance language and rarely make the reader's actual position clear. What matters is which stage the notice describes and what the company requires to restore the policy, if restoring it is still possible.
• Cash value in an older permanent policy. Long-held permanent policies sometimes hold accumulated value, and owners want to know what it is and whether it can be used. Borrowing against a policy reduces what is eventually paid if the loan is never repaid, so the numbers deserve attention.
• Deciding whether a small policy is worth keeping. A modest amount of coverage with a modest premium can still be good value, especially if it was issued when the insured was young. It can also be the wrong shape for the household now, and the only way to tell is to look.

What to have ready before you call

• The insured person's full legal name as written at the time, including any former surname
• An approximate year of purchase, or the era it belongs to
• Any documents at all: a policy booklet, a receipt book, a premium notice, a letter
• The beneficiary's name, if it is known to you
• A short description of what you are trying to settle

Incomplete information is the normal case with older policies, not the exception. A name and a decade will get the conversation started. The insurer handles identity verification directly with you, and nothing on this page asks for a Social Security number or a policy number.

Before you cancel or replace anything

An old policy is easy to dismiss because the coverage amount looks small next to today's prices. Sometimes that judgment is right, and sometimes it throws away the best-priced coverage in the house.

A policy issued when the insured was young and healthy was priced on those facts and keeps that pricing. A replacement is priced on age and health as they are today, which can be a great deal more, and an application can be declined. A new contract also opens a fresh contestability period, the early years in which the insurer may look back at the application if a claim comes in. Older contracts occasionally carry provisions that are no longer written for new customers, and canceling gives those up along with everything else.

The opposite mistake is real too. Paying for a policy that no longer serves any purpose is not loyalty, it is just cost. The way through is to have the existing contract read and priced against a real alternative before anything gets canceled, and a licensed independent agent can do that with you for nothing.

Questions people ask