You’ve probably worked hard to achieve the dream of a home of your own, and once you have, it makes sense to try to protect is as much as you can.
If anything befalls you, either death or disability, you probably would like to know that your family will not have the home you have worked so hard to get plucked from them. There is an additional insurance that this will not happen. These are called either mortgage insurance policies or disability mortgage insurance policies.
When the primary salary earner’s salary is gone, either because of death or a severe disability that stops him from working, the odds are that the surviving spouse could not keep the house.
Even though any kind of life insurance is hard to think about because it involves the thought of death, one has to face these possibilities. But a good family man will want to protect his family in the case he is no longer there to pay the mortgage.
This is the concept behind a mortgage life insurance policy: to pay off the loan so the family can keep the house. There are two types of life mortgage policies, but decreasing term, whereby the amount paid out reduces as the balance of the mortgage goes down, is the most popular.
The other type of in demand mortgage insurance is disability insurance that will assure that the home loan is paid, even after the primary wage earner is no longer earning any income. This type of insurance pays the bank your mortgage payments while you are not working. Some people think this is not necessary if they have disability insurance at their place of employment, but be aware that this insurance only covers 60 to 70% of earnings, and that may not be enough to pay all expenses, including the mortgage.
There may be even greater reason to have disability insurance, since being disabled is a more likely eventuality in a working person’s life than death.
There is the added complexity that many households could not even afford a home if both partners were not employed, and they should buy a joint policy. Just envision if both income earners were disabled in an accident; since spouses frequently travel together, this is a distinct possibility.