Buying Life Insurance

Where to Start and What to Look For

By Katherine Bontrager

Your life drastically changes with the grand entrance of a new baby. And amid the diapers, feedings and constant awe, some new concerns may surface – namely that you want to ensure your little one is protected. Part of protecting your child is ensuring you and your spouse have enough life insurance to provide peace of mind in case of an accident.

Eric Chaloux of Kansas City, Mo., stumbled across this dilemma recently. "Life insurance never really crossed our mind until we learned we were having a baby," he says. "Nothing makes you feel officially 'old' like shopping for life insurance. It was on my wife's and my to-do list, but as those nine months slowly inched by it got put down further and further on the list. Our baby girl came in May, and we still didn't have life insurance yet. That kind of stepped up the process ... fast!"

Chaloux and his wife quickly began to do research on their own. They did Google searches and asked their friends and family where to go – but everyone gave them a different answer. "That's when we had to really put our heads together and sort through all of the different offers out there," Chaloux says.

"The first thing to consider is what a parent wants to provide for his or her survivors in case of death," says Professor Edward E. Graves, who holds the Charles J. Zimmerman Chair in Life Insurance Education at The American College in Bryn Mawr, Pa., the nation's leading educator of insurance and financial services industry professionals.

Graves says there are three cases to be evaluated while the children are still dependent:

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