Life insurance when you get married

The paperwork of a marriage is mostly ceremonial. The legal effect is not. From the date you marry, the Property (Relationships) Act framework applies to the relationship, the family home is generally relationship property regardless of who bought it, and your existing will is affected by the marriage itself. Insurance sits inside that picture.

For most couples in their late twenties and thirties, the immediate insurance work is administrative rather than new. Beneficiary nominations get made once, early, when the obvious answer was a parent or a flatmate, and then they sit there for a decade. A policy that pays your mother instead of your spouse is not a technicality — it is the wrong outcome at the worst possible time, and it is the single most common thing an adviser finds at a first review.

The second piece is coordination. Two people who each bought cover separately usually own an overlapping, badly balanced set: one with too much life cover and no income protection, the other with employer cover that ends when they change jobs. Looked at as one household, the same money buys a much better structure.

1. 1Pull out every policy you both hold, including anything provided through an employer or a KiwiSaver scheme.
2. 2Check the owner of each policy, the life insured, and the nominated beneficiary. These are three different things and any of them can be wrong.
3. 3Update your wills. Marriage revokes a will in New Zealand unless the will was made in contemplation of that marriage — most are not.
4. 4Add up the household’s combined debt and combined income, then size cover against that, not against two separate lives.
5. 5Keep the older policies unless there is a clear reason not to. Cover bought at 26 is priced on a 26-year-old and underwritten on a 26-year-old’s health.
6. 6Use the marriage as the trigger for any special events increase before the window closes.

Joint or single

A joint life policy insures two lives and pays on the first death, then ends. It is cheaper than two policies and it is tidy. It also leaves the survivor with no cover at an older age, and it is awkward to unpick if the relationship ends. Two single policies cost more and give you two payouts, independent ownership, and the ability to walk away with your own cover intact.

These are the details that decide whether the cover does what you expected. Read them before you compare on price.

• A will made before the marriage is generally revoked by it, which can leave you intestate without noticing.
• Whether your insurer treats a beneficiary nomination as binding, or as a direction it may follow.
• Employer-provided life cover, which typically ends when the job ends and is rarely portable on the same terms.
• Prenuptial or contracting-out agreements, which can affect who is entitled to a payout and should be drafted with the insurance in view.
• Whether one of you is bringing a student loan, a business guarantee or a family loan into the relationship.
• Policy fees — some insurers charge per policy rather than per life, which changes the maths on combining cover.

Every New Zealand insurer writes household life and disability cover to its own wording, and the words are where the money is. Two policies that look identical on price can pay very differently when it matters. Closing that gap is the entire job of an adviser.

• Comparing an old policy against a current one honestly, including the definitions, rather than assuming newer is better.
• Structuring ownership across two lives so each of you is protected and neither policy is trapped.
• Finding the special events benefit in an existing wording and exercising it correctly.
• Coordinating cover with a lawyer where a contracting-out agreement or a trust is involved.

There are three ways to buy life cover in New Zealand, and they are not equivalent. You can buy direct from one insurer, which means you see one product range and one underwriting appetite. You can buy through your bank, which usually means a single insurer’s product sold under the bank’s brand, often with narrower definitions. Or you can go through an adviser, who quotes several insurers at once and is required to put your interests first.

The premium you pay is the same either way. Insurers build adviser commission into their pricing whether or not an adviser is involved, so going direct does not get you a discount — it just removes the person whose job is to argue your corner at application and at claim time.

• An adviser can see which insurer is currently taking your health history on standard terms, and which one will load or exclude it.
• An adviser can structure cover across two insurers if that produces a better outcome than putting everything with one.
• An adviser handles the underwriting back-and-forth, and is the person who chases the claim when a family is least able to.
• An adviser has to document why the recommendation suits you, which is a written record you can hold them to.

We are a referral service, not an insurer. We do not quote premiums and we do not sell policies. What we do is put you in front of one licensed New Zealand adviser who can compare the market properly.

1. 1

   You tell us what you are looking at

   The form takes about a minute. Nobody asks for your medical history on a web form — that conversation happens with the adviser, properly, and only once you have decided to proceed.

2. 2

   An adviser calls you

   A licensed New Zealand adviser talks through your situation: who depends on you, what you owe, what you already have in place, and what you are actually worried about.

3. 3

   They compare the market

   The adviser quotes across the major insurers, checks which of them will take your health history on the best terms, and puts the options side by side in writing.

4. 4

   You decide, in your own time

   There is no obligation and no cost to you. If the answer is that you already have enough cover, a good adviser will tell you that.