Life Insurance for Gestational Mothers
In representing Intended Parents and occasionally Gestational Mothers in drafting gestational agreements and surrogacy agreements, one term that is standard in these is one about the Intended Parents providing insurance for the Gestational Mother / Surrogate, generally agreeing to make the payments from soon after signing or upon confirmation of pregnancy until a few months after birth of child or end of the pregnancy. I decided to call the insurance broker that my husband and I used to ask about how pregnancy affects getting life insurance.
David Goldstein is who my husband and I went to when we set up our life insurance a couple of years ago. A work acquaintance of my husband’s had recently fell down dead. I think he was around forty. His wife was pregnant at the time. Awful awful. It was enough to get us in to get ourselves set up with insurance on each other.
David Goldstein reminded me of a fairly good test case for applying for life insurance when you are pregnant: me. He said insurance companies treat healthy pregnant women the same as they treat healthy people in general. They are willing to insure them at the same rates as they would were the woman equivalently healthy and not pregnant. David said my policy was finalized October of 2011 and my bundle-of-joy #2 was born December of that year. So it’s certainly possible.
The rates they insurance companies offer are called preferred plus, preferred, standard… and then the next thing down is for them to just refuse to cover someone.
Ninety-nine percent of gestational mothers and surrogates have had children before. Generally these women had perfectly healthy pregnancies and good experiences with the process or else would not self-select to voluntarily get pregnant again with someone else’s child. These are women who drink and smoke little enough that they are willing to contractually agree to stop for the whole pregnancy. There’s a good chance they are not on psych meds; if they are, it’s probably for something mild enough they can agree to forego them e.g. anti-anxiety meds for plane flights. So these women are likely to be preferred plus or preferred.
There are a few non-personal-health things that can drive the rates up. Fly airplanes? Parachute? Guess what, your life insurance is more expensive. These sorts of things probably would not apply here. One of the most likely things that could make the life insurance more expensive for a gestational mother is family history. If both her parents dies of heart disease or cancer before age sixty, she is probably going to have more expensive life insurance.
The other thing, of course, that could drive up the cost of the insurance is a pregnancy that is not going well. In deciding who is a healthy person, insurance companies assess the applicant’s height and weight. They ask pregnant women about pre-pregnancy height and weight and more or less go by that. However, if someone were to gain one hundred pounds within first trimester, obviously that is the sign of a non-healthy pregnancy. Gestational diabetes? You aren’t preferred plus anymore.
However, assuming the insurance is finalized very early in the pregnancy, problems are very unlikely to crop up for someone who is a basically healthy person who has had healthy pregnancies in the past. So the contracts that put the aegis on the gestational mother to arrange herself coverage after pregnancy is confirmed do force her to assume a slight amount of risk of not being able to be covered, but should not be a deal-breaker for her. However, the parties should not delay in getting the policy set up. The longer the wait, the more likely a problem could crop up in the pregnancy that would make coverage more expensive than it would have been otherwise. Also, David Goldstein told me that is someone doesn’t start the life application process until thirty-four weeks (or more) of pregnancy, there is an excellent chance that the life insurance companies will just drag their heels until the birth before letting policy start. Oh, wait, could you get us one more letter from your obstetrician telling us your latest glucose count? Oh wait, could you get that notarized? Etc. Because why did you wait so long into the pregnancy to apply if you weren’t scared about a problem? Notable exception to it maybe not working out if you apply late in the pregnancy: me. However note that I’m a professional so it was plausible that my husband wanted protection from loss of my income rather than that we were scared of a problem pregnancy.
Oh, and I would obviously recommend anyone shopping for life insurance contact David Goldstein because he made an effort to educate himself about these pregnancy issues and their affect on life insurance in order to talk to me. And you’re probably going to get a better deal if you go to a broker who can help you compare prices between a few different companies, which is what he does.
