My mother in law died on 03/106/12 of breast cancer, and had 2 life policies, 1 for the mortgage, taken out in 1995 and one for life cover taken out in 2005. She filed a claim in April 2012 under the terminal illness provision. Her insurers are now refusing to pay out claiming non disclosure. There was an incident in 2000 where excess alcohol and tablets were consumed, but no history before or repeat afterwards. On the application which was sold door to door the questions "were you ever treated in hospital for mental illness" was answered "No", purley because the family are adamant and this could be verified by the GP that she was never diagnosed with a mental illness. How should we approach the insurance company, as in reality these questions should have been asked by them whilst she was still alive.
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Hi,
The first thing that I suggest you do is try and obtain a copy of your Mother-In-Law's medical records.
Once you have done this, you will then have something to approach the Insurance Company with.
Your case is dependent upon the wording of the policy and whether the questions asked of your mother-in-law were clear enough.
The question quite simply was "Were you ever treated in hospital for a mental illness?" Which was answered no becuase she was not, she was treated for a one off incident
Once you have armed yourself with the medical report, you should contact the Insurance Company and challenge their decision to not pay. You should suggest that the wording was unclear and that the GP's records substantiate your claim and suggest that they reconsider.
If they do not re-consider, you will have the threaten them with legal proceedings. If the threat of proceedings does not work, you will have to take the next step and issue proceedings against the insurance company.
If that the question, and there is no record of any mental illness in her medical records, I would be of the opinon that you would have a strong case to argue.
I hope this answers your question. If so, kindly click ACCEPT.
If you wish to discuss, please feel free to ask further questions.
Kind regards,
They continue to write to the doctors seeking information and the surgery have commented that they have alkready sent the information which was recently requested again. This claim was lodged in April 2102 and they are still not giving any clear indication other than "they have concerns around non-diclosure". This is causing significant additional distress to this family, is ther anything further I can do to speed this up now, as I feel it is absolutely ridiculous and disgraceful it has gone on this long
Hi, the only thing you can do to speed this up is threaten the, with legal proceedings.
If they still refuse to pay, you will have to sue them.
I would suggest that the executors of your mother-in-law's estate instruct solicitors to conduct the proceedings.