One of the most frustrating things, when it comes to life insurance anyways, can be trying to get things started up again after you’ve had a lapse in coverage. Whether you just didn’t get the premium paid on time or for some other reason, when a term life insurance policy is canceled you lose all of the benefits of having the policy, and you’ll likely face much higher rates when you try to get insured again.

The first thing you need to do if you want to get your policy going again is to identify what caused it to lapse in the first place. Usually, this is pretty basic. You didn’t pay the premiums so the company dumped you. But beyond this, you need to figure out why you couldn’t pay. Did you have a change in employment or income? Did an emergency come up? Basically, you need to reexamine your budget to make sure you can again afford a policy.

Next, you need to recognize that the term life insurance policy you had may well be a thing of the past. Your insurance company is under no obligation to revive it for you. The terms of the policy very explicitly state that, for the policy to be in effect, you need to keep paying the premiums. If you don’t, the policy won’t be in effect.

Once you have these preliminaries out of the way, you can look at specific revival methods. There are, usually, three methods of reviving your life insurance policy:

1. Standard revival. For this kind of revival, you need to get the policy back into effect usually within six months of it lapsing. You don’t need to provide any statement of personal health, and you will have to pay interest on the premium payments that you missed, based on when the policy is reinstated.
2. Non-medical revival. This kind of revival will take place after the standard revival period but doesn’t require a medical assurance statement. Depending on your situation, age and other factors, as well as the type of policy, the insurance company may not require medical assurance.
3. Medical revival. For some, you are going to have to revive your policy by meeting medical requirements. This might include a physical examination (at your expense, of course) and it might include additional paperwork regarding your medical condition and access to your medical records.

Photo via jurvetson