Well let’s talk about prepaid legal services. My mom bought an insurance policy through a company called Primerica. She purchased this policy 7 years before she passed away. Now when she bought this policy she also bought the extra service that went with it call prepaid legal. My mom paid $25.00 a month for this and paid it faithfully every month. The insurance was to pay for all of her final expenses, and for a attorney to handle all of her final arrangements. She had set it up so that my brothers and myself would not have to be concerned with any of it at the time of her death. Well She passed a couple years ago and we found out she had been scammed. Well partially scammed anyways. The insurance policy did pay off just as it was supposed to, but! The prepaid attorney refused to even get on the phone and talk with us. We ended up doing everything he was prepaid for 7 years to do. Since my mother had setup this service, we really had no idea what all needed to be done after her death. Like accounts that needed to be closed, accounts that needed to paid off, or anything else. When we would try to discuss it with her, she would always tell us not to worry about it, she had it took care of already. And all we needed to do was call this number she had on a card and notify them of her death.
Well as I said the day came that she passed and we did as she to do. While we were at the funeral home we made the call to them and was told they would not be doing anything. The death insurance paid just as it was supposed to so we were able to give her the burial that she deserved. But because she had put all of her faith into the prepaid legal service, we ended up having to hunt down all of her accounts and other final arrangements. But that’s not even what upset us as we were glad to do it for her. What upset us was the fact that we were told that she was dead and the company had no further obligations to her. Now my mother was not a rich woman by any means, but she did have a lot of things that had to be handled after her death. But the fact that they refused fulfill the obligations that they did have to her, wasn’t even the worst part of it. That wouldn’t come till the next month.
I’m not sure how many are aware that once a person dies, the family cannot close their bank accounts or even remove the money until all outstanding checks have been paid. And the social security office says to leave it open for a minimum of 3 months to insure they can retrieve any money paid to them after their death. Well following the bank and the social security’s rules we did leave her account open. One day I go to retrieve her mail and there was a statement from the bank stating her account was over drawn. Now knowing that all of her checks had already cleared her account and all credit accounts were paid by the insurance on each of them, we could not figure out why her account was now over drawn. So we go to the bank and find out that Primerica was still taking $25.00 a month out of her account. When we called them to get it cleared up we were informed that they had all rights to continue taking the money, because they were not notified of her death. Which was a complete lie. As I said we had spoken with the person that was supposed to handle her final arrangements at the funeral home. And was told they would not be doing anything for her as she was dead and they had no obligation to us.
Now the company that was supposed to protect her interest was bankrupting a woman that prided herself in not ever being in debt after her death. We had to pay back the bank the money they took plus all of the fees they charged for it being over drawn. The insurance is a good one to have as they did pay as they said.
I’m not sure if any of you will find this information useful but I felt I should take a moment to warn everyone about the prepaid legal services offered by Primerica.
