A divorce can be a nasty event in a person's life. If you have been married for any length of time you are probably eligible for one half of your spouses assets including personal property, annuities, insurance policies, bank accounts, and so on.

What about life insurance policies?

There's a good article in the personal finance section of Fox business online that addresses this as though a spouse is writing a question to an insurance agent asking for their advice.

The premise is that a lady is getting a divorce from her husband and his questioning why she is not eligible for one half of the value in a $100,000 term life insurance policy. She was the beneficiary on the policy until the divorce, and now her husband has taken her name off the policy.

This is something that many divorced people face. The question is do you have to pass away before you can collect on a term life insurance policy in the case of divorce.

Here is the key point. There is value in the form of cash in a permanent life insurance policy. However term life insurance policies have no cash value.

If her husband was to die while they were still married she would be eligible for the $100,000. Generally people take out term life insurance policies to cover expenses such as funeral costs, or paying off a mortgage.

Since she has gone through a divorce, she no longer needs the money to cover those expenses. Her husband is responsible for making sure that's taken care of with his new wife or children, or whoever's responsible for him after he dies.

Chances are that the husband will change the beneficiary to his new wife or children to help cover these costs. He is still responsible for the premium on the policy, and not his ex-wife.

I'm reading: Life Insurance Policies And Divorce

Life insurance is one of those things that you really don't want to think about. You pay into your policy most of your life, and when you die you're not the one who gets to take advantage of it. Life insurance is for the living not the dead!

To me is comes down to 2 two questions.

1. Do I need life insurance? Yes if you have dependents and not enough savings. They are left to cover your funeral costs and any other expenses you may have left.

2. How much life insurance do I need? There is not an exact formulas that is going to cover everybody, but there are a few things to keep in mind.

Larry Light discusses this at Forbes.com in an article "How Much Life Insurance Do I Need"

1. Do you have a mortgage? If you do you want to have enough coverage to pay that off.

What other debt do you have besides your mortgage? Other things such as do you add to your debt, and how are you paying it off will help you determine how much life insurance you need to pay everything off.

2. What are your monthly living expenses? If you don't know exactly what you're spending you can find some good software online to download and determine exactly what your monthly needs are.

You may not be able to leave your dependents all the money that they need to live on the rest of their life. But it would be nice to have enough life insurance that they could invest some of it at a decent return rate to develop additional income for them in the future.

If you haven't taken the steps to get your affairs in order, including life insurance, you need to do that. Nobody knows exactly when their time here on earth will end, and life insurance helps you protect against that unforeseen day.

I'm reading: Do You Have Life Insurance?

Many times life insurance is one of those things you buy because you know you need it, but then you forget about it. Out of sight out of mind so to speak.

According to the online Wall Street Journal you may be able to save money right now on your life insurance policy and not even be aware of it.

For example, have you changed careers since your purchased your policy? If you are in a lower risk profession John Rugel, vice president of life underwriting and new business at Allstate says you may be eligible for lower rates.

Some jobs are more risky then others and are priced accordingly. Less risk equals lower premiums on permanent and whole life policies.

Are you healthier now because you have lowered your cholesterol or quyit smoking? Maybe your weight has dropped.

When is the last time you went through 1 day without hearing about quitting smoking or losing weight? But you have not even checked to see if these things could save you money on your life insurance.

Steven Weisbart, chief economist at the Insurance Information Institute in New York says if you have lost weight, quit smoking, or had a drop in your cholesterol numbers, you should reevaluate your premiums.

Don't make the mistake of thinking the savings would not be large enough to go through the hassle of checking them out.

In one example...

1. 45 year old male who is 5"10" and weighed 300 pounds bought a $500,000 term policy.

2. Now he has lost 60 lbs., has kept it off for 1 year and is in good health.

How much could he save? How about almost 50% on his monthly premium. That is enough to make you want to get in shape and check it out if you have not already done so.

I'm reading: Saving Money On Life Insurance