Wondering how to avoid leaving your loved ones with a financial burden when you pass away, especially if you haven’t saved much? Burial insurance, also known as final expense insurance, is your answer. This type of insurance covers costs related to your death, like funeral and burial expenses, celebration-of-life costs, outstanding medical bills, and any debts that you leave behind.
In 2024, our experts have analyzed life insurance policies from top-rated companies to bring you a list of the best burial insurance providers. We’ve considered important factors like age requirements, medical exam rules, and available riders to help you find the most affordable and beneficial policies.
Here are the top burial insurance companies right now, each excelling in at least one area, whether it’s providing great value to policyholders or accepting applicants from a wide age range:
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Mutual of Omaha: Best for No Medical Exam
- They make the application process easy by not requiring a medical exam. You just answer a few basic questions about yourself, and you’re set. They won’t turn you down for health reasons, and they offer up to $25,000 in coverage, depending on age. However, the policy may have a waiting period of up to two years, and premiums may be higher due to the absence of a medical exam.
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Fidelity Life: Best for Immediate Coverage
- They offer a wide range of burial insurance products with full coverage available immediately, bypassing the usual two-year waiting period. This is ideal for applicants who aren’t sure how long they have left to live. Policies range up to $40,000, but coverage amounts are low and only available to those between ages 50 and 85.
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Ethos: Best for Life Insurance Choices
- Ethos operates differently, acting as a third-party administrator working with well-known life insurance companies like Legal & General America, Ameritas, and Mutual of Omaha. Policies range from $1,000 to $30,000, and beneficiaries can use the funds for any purpose. However, they don’t offer burial-specific insurance, only whole life policies to be used for burial.
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State Farm: Best for Simple Application Process
- They offer a guaranteed issue final expense insurance policy, a type of whole life insurance policy, with no medical exams or questions. Coverage is limited at $15,000, and options for New York residents are limited.
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AARP/New York Life: Best for AARP Members
- They offer an AARP-exclusive life insurance product for AARP members. They guarantee acceptance, and the application takes only a few minutes online. They offer coverage up to $25,000, but there’s a two-year waiting period, and it’s only available up to age 75 in New York.
Burial insurance is a type of whole life insurance designed to cover your final expenses. However, the beneficiary can generally use the death benefit as they see fit. If there’s money left over after paying for your final expenses, the beneficiary gets to keep it.
Burial insurance is relatively expensive because it’s designed for older applicants. However, the actual monthly premium on a burial insurance policy is likely to be manageable due to the policy’s small size. Most burial insurance policies qualify as no-medical-exam life insurance.
Your burial insurance policy doesn’t have a fixed term and won’t expire, even if you live a very long time after buying it. However, if you stop paying premiums before your policy allows you to, your policy could expire.
There are three death benefit payout options: level, graded, and modified. Level policies’ death benefits remain constant throughout the policy’s life, regardless of how soon you die after purchasing coverage. Graded death benefits increase with time, with the full benefit typically available only after the two-year waiting period ends. Modified death benefits take two full years to kick in — if you die during the waiting period, your beneficiaries may only receive the premiums you paid plus a small percentage of the death benefit.
It’s very rare for insurers to deny burial insurance claims. The most common reasons for a denied claim include the policyholder stopped paying premiums and didn’t reinstate the policy, the policyholder died during the waiting period, or the policyholder died due to an excluded reason, such as suicide during the policy’s first two years.
If you’re unsure which policy is right for you, consider your personal circumstances and objectives. Once you have a good idea of what you’re looking for, take another look at your options and choose the policy that best fits your needs.
Burial insurance is just one option to protect your beneficiaries when you die. It’s often costly and provides limited coverage. Here are some good alternatives to consider: term life insurance, whole life insurance, and savings.
We selected the best final expenses insurance companies using several factors, including eligible age to apply, policy type options, coverage amounts, and medical exam requirements. No single factor overrules any other, but we prefer companies that score well on as many metrics as possible.
