Life Insurance for the Stay-at-Home Spouse

For various reasons there has been a shift in the way families determine their income needs. After a few decades of mostly two income households, there has been a trend in America back to the one income household.

Today's One Income Households are Different

These one income households are different than the "Leave it to Beaver" days... we now sometimes see fathers staying at home and the stay-at-home parent has chose to add many more responsibilities than was typical in the past one income households. Stay-at-home parents are now managing bills, being taxi drivers, and sometimes even are the main educator of their children such as in home schooling families. All of these tasks are in addition to the traditional tasks such as meal preparation, laundry services and house keeper.

All Families With Children Should Have Life Insurance

Many families now know that life insurance is important for both parents in a one income household. It is not hard to see how much of a financial loss the stay-at-home parent would cause if they died. For example, add up how much it would cost for a family to provide daycare, housecleaning services, taxi services, meal preparation services and after school care... and this is just a few of the many tasks a stay-at-home parent performs.

Who Will Take Care of the Emotional Needs of the Child?

Unfortunately though, most families just minimally insure the stay-at-home spouse. The family feels the minimal insurance they have would be sufficient to take care of the above mentioned tasks, at least until the youngest child was out of school. But what about the child's emotional loss from their deceased stay-at-home parent? Can hired help really take care of those needs? What if the working parent realized they needed to be the stay-at-home parent for a while... would there be enough life insurance to cover the working parent's lost wages?

The First Few Years After a Loss is Critical

Sadly, most families don't carry enough life insurance to supply this need. Obviously loosing a parent is very tragic and can have complicated and lasting effects on a child. Usually the first few years are very tough. In most families the best situation would be for the surviving parent to be able to devote themselves full-time to their children for the first few tough years. This can be possible with the proper life insurance coverage.

I have read tragic stories of families in this exact situation... the stay at home parent dies and although the family had life insurance, financial they were fine as long as the surviving parent still worked. But the children were an emotional mess and tragic consequences followed such as bad social choices. The working surviving spouse wanted desperately to be with their children full-time to help them better through their loss but could not survive financially since they did not purchase enough life insurance.

Adding Extra Life Insurance to Cover the Surviving Spouse's Income is Achievable

Life insurance, especially term life insurance, is relatively inexpensive and if a family already has a policy on the stay-at-home parent, the family probably would not experience a financial hardship by adding to the existing life insurance amount to cover a few years of time off for the surviving parent to be with the surviving children.

All families with children should have life insurance on both parents, regardless of weather they work or not. In addition, those same families should seriously consider adding on to their life insurance policies to take into account the potential loss of income if the surviving spouse would need or choose to devote themselves full-time to their children during the fragile grieving process.