Free Life Insurance, and No, There’s No Catch
Source: MEEP MEEP MEEP MEEP MEEP

You’ve probably heard that nothing in life is free. But sometimes you can get something for nothing.

For example, MassMutual Financial Group, one of the nation’s largest life insurance companies, is actually offering something free to low-income working parents.

Under its LifeBridge program, MassMutual is writing term life policies at no cost for families earning $40,000 or less. The company has promised to pay the premiums for 20,000 policies nationally, each with a $50,000 death benefit.

Each LifeBridge policy — one per household — has a 10-year term and must list the insured’s children as the beneficiaries. If the insured parent or legal guardian dies during the 10-year period, the $50,000 benefit per policy will be applied toward the education of the children named as beneficiaries. The money is put into a trust administered by the MassMutual Trust Co. on behalf of the children. The trust will pay the educational expenses directly to the educational institution the children attend.

Various types of schools qualify for reimbursement, including, but not limited to, preschools, private schools, vocational schools, community colleges, universities, art and music schools and graduate schools. Some of the expenses covered include books, tuition and room and board.

Mark Di Giorgio, director of public relations for MassMutual, said the LifeBridge program is part of MassMutual’s effort to merge its corporate philanthropic efforts in education with its main corporate agenda, insurance. The LifeBridge program was introduced in September 2002 and has been rolled out nationwide on a state-by-state basis. It is available in 46 states plus the District. The policies are not yet available in New Mexico, West Virginia, Maine or South Dakota. The company is working on approval in those states, Di Giorgio said. So far MassMutual has written 3,650 policies. The company hopes to issue 20,000 policies by Dec. 31, 2007. [Text continued at site.]

My citation here is from the Washington Post, and Meep herself is personally known to me as reliable (we were roommates in high school). In addition, I ran this through Snopes and there was nothing on file. In other words, I’ve done about all the fact checking I can do and believe this to be real and not a scam.