Your life insurance policy will pay death benefits to your beneficiaries if you die from a car accident, drowning, poisoning, accidental drug overdose, or other tragedy. Drug overdose and life insurance exclusions There are certain types of death that are excluded from coverage under a life insurance policy. In most cases, life insurance will be paid if the policyholder dies, although there are exceptions, such as if the death occurred within two years of the execution of the policy or if the applicant misrepresented the information in their application. However, if the insured person overdosed on a prescription drug, their life insurance could still pay.
As you can see, insurers are reluctant to pay claims when the death was the result of drug or alcohol abuse. If the overdose occurred as a result of the use of illicit drugs such as methamphetamine, cocaine or heroin, the insurer may argue that the insured knew or should have known the risks of using those drugs and consider that the overdose was intentional, thus refusing to pay the claim. Attorney Tatiana Kadetskaya has more than 10 years of experience in life insurance law representing beneficiaries and policy owners. What exactly constitutes illegal drug use can be challenged by a life insurance lawyer experienced in these cases.
Contestable life insurance claims can be problematic if the deceased failed to disclose medical or recreational marijuana use. In addition, if the insured abused drugs or alcohol but did not die from that abuse but from something else, the drugs were incidental to the death and the policy could still pay. Life insurance normally covers all deaths, unless there are provisions for non-payment due to suicide or there are significant misrepresentations in the application for life insurance and the death occurred within the first two years of the date the policy was issued. This interpretation does not always work in favor of beneficiaries and results in many ADD requests being rejected due to the exclusion of medications.
Many beneficiaries were reimbursed when the insured died unexpectedly with drugs or alcohol in their blood. Overdoses are often due to incorrectly prescribed medications, an accidental double dose of narcotic pain relievers or other sedative-type medications, or interactions between several medications taken together. When insurance company consultants evaluate toxicology reports, they don't consider all of these factors and unfairly reject many ADD claims.
