If you're planning for your family's future, you might be wondering "can you have multiple life insurance policies?" The good news is that yes, having multiple policies is perfectly legal.
How Many Life Insurance Policies Can One Person Have?
You can have as many life insurance policies as you want because there are no legal limits to how many one person can get. Sometimes insurance companies may deny you further life insurance coverage if your total benefits between all of your policies are much higher than your income. This might happen if you try to get policies that pay out 20 to 30 times your income.
What Happens if You Have Two Life Insurance Policies?
If you have two or more life insurance policies, you have to pay your monthly premium on all existing policies to keep them active. Any policies active at the time of your death will be paid out to your beneficiaries.
Reasons to Ask, "Can You Have Multiple Life Insurance Policies?"
If you're asking "can you have multiple life insurance policies?", you probably want to find a way to stack your benefits. Having multiple life insurance policies is a way to increase the total amount of compensation your beneficiaries receive after your death. Being able to cash out on two or more life insurance policies may help your beneficiaries continue paying bills and cover unexpected expenses once you're gone.
You might also want to stack life insurance policies with different terms to account for specific life changes. For example, stacking a 30-year $100,000 term life insurance policy with a 10-year $500,000 term life insurance policy would give you $600,000 in coverage during the next decade while your kids are still in the house and you have a mortgage. It would then provide $100,000 in coverage for the next two decades, when your spouse won't require as much income to support growing children and the mortgage is already paid off.
Disadvantages to Having Multiple Life Insurance Policies
Having multiple life insurance policies means that you need to remember to make regular payments on all of the policies instead of just one. You may also have to undergo a medical exam or submit financial information for each life insurance policy you buy. It might be easier to find a single life insurance policy with the coverage you need instead of dividing up benefits between multiple policies.
Alternatives to Having Multiple Life Insurance Policies
If you think you might want to get additional life insurance in the future, consider asking whether your primary insurer can add a rider to your policy instead of asking, "can you have multiple life insurance policies?" A policy rider sets the terms for adding extra coverage, so it might include the option of raising your coverage amount if your financial situation changes or letting you add more coverage later without getting another medical exam.
