More and more companies are offering policies that provide accelerated death benefits
or "living benefits." These products allow policyholders, under certain circumstances,
to get access to part of the death benefits of their life insurance policies prior
to death.
Most accelerated death benefit policies fall into three basic models. They are the
longterm care model, which gives policyholders access to benefits should they require
extended health care; the catastrophic illness or dread disease model, for benefits
needed to help pay medical costs resulting from a number of specified conditions;
and the terminal illness model. Under this last model, the insured can obtain his
or her death benefits following a diagnosis of terminal illness, if death is likely
to occur within a specified number of months.