My father passed away 2 years ago.  One month prior to his passing he
told my step mother that he had taken out a life insurance on himself
soon after I was born (1968) as me as the benificiary (for college
funds).  We can not find ANY documentation in his records and nothing
has come in the mail since his passing refering to any such policy. 
He brought the subject up in very sound mind.  It has to exist.  HOW
would I be able to research all life insurance companies?  Is there
ANY way to research this?

---

Request for Question Clarification by pinkfreud-ga on 29 Dec 2003 17:15 PST

This service might be helpful:

http://www.l-lifeinsurance.com/

Here's some general info from the Insurance Information Institute:

http://www.iii.org/individuals/life/help/locatelost/

A friend of mine was in a similar situation after his brother's death.
The family was able to find the name of the insurance company by
examining the archives of the deceased man's checking account. If your
father paid life insurance premiums, it is likely that he did so by
check, probably on a monthly or quarterly basis. Have you thoroughly
examined his checking records for recurring payments?

---

Request for Question Clarification by tutuzdad-ga on 29 Dec 2003 17:38 PST

Dear rkimball-ga;

Unfortunatley, for you and thousands of others like you, there is no
single database (in spite of what you might read elsewhere) that
contains the names of all insured persons in order to you to check and
see which company your father might have been insured with. If you
sign on with one of these "companies" that claims to research lost
policies for you (some of them questionable perhaps), as your
contracted agent, they will most certainly claim a fee - maybe even a
*significant percentage* of whatever the policy might be worth. These
companies, for the most part, are not associated with insurance
companies per se and provide the "service" for profit. Its as simple
as that.

If you are interested in a do-it-yourself search so you can retain ALL
of the potential proceeds you are entitled to, I know of a website
that has loads of information (all in one place for easy viewing)
about how to get started, some suggestions on where to look and who to
call, as well as a "research kit" complete with form letters,
informative resources and more. These are all FREE for you to use at
the source I located.

If you'd like this single source as an answer I think you'll be
pleased with what you learn from it. If I have your permission I will
post it as an answer for you.

Regards;
tutuzdad-ga

I had a similar problem in the UK and I found the search agencies useless. 

After A LOT of persistence I eventually got paid out. It was A LOT of
money and well worth the effort.

Good luck!

wow, great.

My sympathies on your loss.

The main problem is that your father should have at least told you the
name of the company he had the policy with and he should have kept a
copy of the policy in his personal papers.  Now you have no way of
knowing for sure whether he told you the truth or whether he could
have started paying premiums on the policy but may have later let it
lapse in which case it would now have no effect.  Have you already
looked through his personal papers/documents to see what is there?

The Lost Life Insurance company is an excellent place to start.  Also
you may want to visit your state's unclaimed property website to see
if perhaps the paid-in-full policy was perhaps turned over to the
state.

SINCERELY,
KEITH (I'm NOT a GOOGLE Researcher)