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 during the heist or fall out of a window on my head.
I also cannot die while involved in any other criminal activity so I am going out tonight to disassemble my meth lab. As well, 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 some rat poison accidentally gets mixed into my spaghetti sauce (not an impossible development), and I eat it not knowing it’s there, no dollars.
How is that fair?
I can’t inhale any type of gas “voluntarily or involuntarily” so there goes the whole car in the garage thing.
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 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.)
And to top it all off, if I get killed in a war, no money. So, if the U.S. decides to retaliate for losing the war against Canada exactly 200 years ago this year and invades us, I’d better quick build a bomb shelter and get in it or the 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!
©2012 Jim Hagarty
