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This article is aimed at couples buying life insurance and the benefits over cost of having or arranging two single life plans rather than just arranging a joint life first death plan for both individuals.

Many people aren’t aware that it they can benefit more from having their own life insurance policy. Thought they know they need insurance, they haven’t explored all their options. If you’re thinking about getting life insurance for yourself and your partner, here’s some information that might help.

To understand this principle you first need to be aware of the choices open to you. Say for example you are a couple who need life insurance for whatever reason. Most people in this position would opt for a joint life first death life insurance plan. Joint life first death is simple in so much as the benefit is paid once in the event of the first person dying. Once this event has taken place the plan ceases and there is no cover for the surviving individual.

The alternative is to arrange life cover on the basis of two single life plans one plan for each person. The result of this is, if one person dies the plan which they own will pay out. The important thing here is the surviving person still has their own life insurance in tact. This is because their plan was not affected by their partner dying.

Unfortunately, most couples who take out insurance plans don’t think about the possibilities of traditional plans. This leaves one of them without cover, and may force them to arrange alternative life insurance in a hurry if insurance is required. Since taking out a plan when you’re older is a lot more expensive, a joint plan can cost you more in the long run than two individual plans.

Another reason that it might be easier to get a pair of individual plans is that many marriages and relationships don’t end up the way we’d like. As much as forty percent of the marriages in the United States end in divorce. Unmarried people, with no legal obligations, have an even higher rate of separation. This doesn’t mean that your relationship will be one that fails, of course. However, it’s still a good idea to set things up so that a possible separation will be simple. It can’t take all the stress and difficulty out of a divorce or breakup, but getting two single life insurance plans does remove the issue of trying to separate the benefits from a joint policy.

A common misconception is that the expense of setting up two life insurance plans is so high as to be prohibitive. This isn’t really the case, however. Arranging for two individual policies (one for each member of a couple) can cost as little as an extra ten percent more than a joint plan would have. If you pay attention to the quantity of benefits you’re likely to receive, versus the minimal extra expense, it’s clear that having a plan of your own is the better choice.

Finally one of the best benefits offered by having two plans over the one joint life plan is the benefit of having two payouts over one. If you have a joint life plan, as has been mentioned earlier in this article, there will only ever be one payout as once the first life assured dies the plan ceases to exist. If you have two single life plans both plans are independent of each other and therefore subject to both life assureds dying within the term of the plans there will be two payouts. Couple this with the previously discussed fact of the two plans only costing about 10% more on premiums makes this of great financial benefit.

So in summary having two plans over one means you do not have to reapply for life cover if one of the lives assured dies, you have a far more flexible arrangement should you separate and finally from a cost point of view, being on average only 10% more monthly but with twice the amount of life cover this type of arrangement is far more financially beneficial.

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