Marriage and Insurance : What to Consider as a Couple

At this point you and future spouse have planned everything out to the smallest detail. The flowers have been ordered, the dinner seating arrangements planned, the rings bought. With all of that set you likely have planned out quite a lot of what needs to happen for post-wedding, one thing that is often overlooked is something used on a daily basis across the nation , insurances.

Although it is not nearly as exciting as the rest of your life planning, insurance should be on the list of priorities. While it may seem like something that could be put off for awhile, it will not only cost more money but could also leave you uninsured. Dealing with everything as soon as possible will allow you the peace of mind of knowing that you and your spouse are insured and taken care if anything happens.

Auto Insurance

Legally, if you drive, you must have some form of auto insurance. This could be liability or comprehensive but each state requires that some sort of coverage. Fortunately, many insurance companies will offer a discount to married couples. This discount is particularly larger for younger couples as younger males have a higher premium than female drivers but married couples are viewed as being more responsible and financially stable than singles and thus they are allotted a discount. The car insurance rate is determined by many factors, the largest being driving history, age and the make and model of the car. It is necessary to let your insurance company know that you are now married rather than single and see what discounts they can offer. Another potential way to save additional money would be to see if there would be additional discounts for bringing your spouse to your insurance company, you spouse should do the same, and then compare the results to make an educated decision.

Home Insurance

At this point you may already know what the situation will be with regards to housing, perhaps you or your spouse are moving to the others home or you are both moving into a new house entirely. Regardless of what is happening, there will be some major moves involved and the same is true of your home insurance. Whichever person is moving may decide to keep their old home in order to rent it out. If that is the case they should contact their insurance company and cancel their current policy and see what they offer in terms of landlords insurance. Landlords insurance protects your home while being rented out. The policy at the home where you and your spouse will be living should be looked into as well. It is necessary to let the company know of the status change to married , which may offer a discount, but it is also important to increase the policy. Now that you will both be living together, the value of the assets in the home will be greatly increased and thus the policy should be altered to reflect that.

Health Insurance

The earlier insurances are pretty straight forward to deal with as they are familiar to most people, the latter two involve a bit more thought and deal with health and mortality. When dealing with these insurances, it is important to assess what it is that you and your spouse are looking for. There are many options that can be chosen with health insurance and thus it is important to know what you are wanting so that you do not overspend. One quick thing that should be noted if you are a younger couple and still on a parent's policy, you will likely be dropped from coverage once married and thus it is vital to get things sorted out as quickly as possible to maintain coverage.

There are a few possible scenarios that you and your spouse will fall into. It may be that you both have your health insurance coverage through work. If this is the case, that makes things pretty simple. What you will need to do is look into the specifics of what each plan covers, and what options may be available, and your spouse should do the same. It is also important to see what the premium would be for the addition of a family member to the policy. This information may be in the documents you have already, else would be easily found through your HR department or the insurance company directly. Based on this information, it is relatively straight forward from here to determine which is the better value and add your spouse to that plan.

If only one person has a policy from their workplace, it is important to make sure that they can add someone else to the policy. This will make the monthly cost go up but it should not be double the current premium as you will receive a discount for having more than one person with that company.

It may also be that neither of you has a current plan through work or an individual plan. While it is very difficult to get on group policies that are not through work, it is usually pretty easy to get an individual policy. These should be looked into and as with other insurances, may offer a discount if both of you get a policy.

Life Insurance

Marriage is a major step in any person's live. At this point, you are no longer single and no longer able to focus strictly on yourself. For this reason, many people consider life insurance once they get married in order to ensure that if anything were to ever happen to that person that their spouse's financial situation would be taken care of for years to come. The income of a new family is generally very reliant on the joint income of the couple. There are policies that can last a person's entire life or those that are strictly for a set period. Deciding which policy and for how much they should be for is something that should be discussed with your partner as well as someone versed in life insurance.

On to the Honeymoon!

With all of this out of the way, it is now possible to relax and deal with any last minute issues that may come up.

This article was written by Barbara Waltz one of the founders of 247QuoteUs.com , an online resource blog and insurance quote comparison guide.