By Jim Hagarty
My life insurance company, not content with their monthly haul from our home, wants to sell me another policy which will pay $250,000 to my estate if I die accidentally.
No medical tests necessary.
So I read the fine print.
Apparently, it will be no slam dunk for my family to collect on this policy after I accidentally kick the bucket. For starters, I can’t die while breaking into a bank, which is likely to happen in the absence of the $250,000, kind of a Catch 22 if there ever was one. Presumably, I will be shot by police. From my newspaper days, I know quite a few of the cops in this town which increases the likelihood that this would be the result of my break in.
Also, the company won’t pay if I take my own life “while sane or insane.” But what if I am not sane or insane when I do it?
I can’t use illicit drugs to die, although it looks like I can make it work if I can talk my doctor into giving me something deadly.
I can’t swallow any poison around the house “whether voluntarily or otherwise.” That means, if my wife puts rat poison in my spaghetti sauce (not an impossible development), and I eat it not knowing it’s there, no dollars. How is that fair? (That reminds me of what Winston Churchill said to Lady Astor after she told him that if he was her husband, she would put arsenic in his tea. Madam, he said, if you were my wife, I would drink it!)
I can’t inhale any type of gas “voluntarily or involuntarily” so there goes the whole car in the garage thing. I can’t get the car in the garage anyway.
If I die during a visit to the dentist, the company won’t pay up. How do they know what my dentist is like, I wonder. No mention of who pays if my dentist dies during one of my visits.
I can’t die after contracting an infection so I may as well go back to washing my hands after changing the kitty litter before meals.
And this one really gets me.
If I fall out of an airplane or the plane crashes and I die, too bad, so sad – no moolah for my family. (This does not apply if I pay a fare and am on a regularly scheduled flight.)
To wrap things up, if I get killed in a war, no money. So the U.S. decides to retaliate for losing the war against Canada exactly 204 years ago this year and invades us, I’d better quick build a bomb shelter and get in it or the damn insurance company gets off scot free.
In other words, where can I sign up for this policy? It’s just too darned good to pass up! I am dying to get on board.
