# Letter from Insurance Company -- Legitimate or Scam? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [May 31, 2017, 6:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/letter-from-insurance-company-legitimate-or-scam/787758 "2017-05-31T06:11:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2017, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/letter-from-insurance-company-legitimate-or-scam/787758/21 "2017-06-05T20:08:27Z")
> [@muldoonthief](#): > > You will get taxed on the interest that you mentioned a few posts back. You said your mother died a few years ago - whatever interest the payout has accrued in that time is taxable to you, since theoretically the payout money was “yours” as soon as they were notified. She died in 2015, and supposedly the interest will be about $20, give or take. I’ll keep all records though and hand them in to my accountant next year. ---
**Author:** ![Spiderman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spiderman/32/230_2.png) [@Spiderman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spiderman)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2017, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/letter-from-insurance-company-legitimate-or-scam/787758/22 "2017-06-05T20:35:41Z")
> [@Tom\_Tildrum](#): > > Sure, but if there’s a house, then the CC company can foreclose on it to get paid off, and the house won’t pass to the kid who’s been living there with Mom for the last ten years. It can be essentially a form of disruption insurance. Maybe I should have used the word “assets” instead of “funds” as the latter has a more liquid connotation to it. However, my original point still stands; if the estate has more debt than assets, you as the decedent’s relative have no obligation to make those debts whole (baring your previous involvement with them - cosigning the loan, etc.). You can’t be obligated to take on others debts & their implication that you must is false & misleading. You’re point would hold true if Mom was paying the mortgage, which is a secured loan. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2017, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/letter-from-insurance-company-legitimate-or-scam/787758/23 "2017-06-27T01:46:58Z")
To follow up on the story, I sent back the notarized information two weeks ago and received a check in today’s mail, for $918.88. So a nice and unexpected little dividend. I learned the actual named beneficiary was my father, but he died many years before she did. Dunno know what that loan business was all about, but I feel this may have been taken out long ago and then forgotten. There is little doubt that if she thought I might benefit from something like this, then she would have canceled it or cashed it in or whatever you do with these policies. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2017, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/letter-from-insurance-company-legitimate-or-scam/787758/24 "2017-06-27T02:05:06Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > Dunno know what that loan business was all about, but I feel this may have been taken out long ago and then forgotten. I meant the insurance policy taken out long ago and then forgotten, not the loan. Although if there was money owed on a loan, maybe it was not forgotten. I suppose I’ll never know. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2020, 5:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/letter-from-insurance-company-legitimate-or-scam/787758/25 "2020-09-13T05:43:22Z")
Bumping this thread, because it happened again! Or at least similar. Last month, I received a letter from MassMutual saying I owed about $25 on a payment toward a loan on a life-insurance policy. After checking this out thoroughly to make sure I was not being scammed, it turned out my father took out a life-insurance policy on me right when I was born. I never knew about it. Thirty years ago, just a few years before he died, he borrowed $500 on it. I did not understand the details, but it seems the … dividends? … covered the repayments until this last one, about $25. How they found my current address, I have no idea, but I guess they have their ways. If I had died, my father would have been the beneficiary. He died last century, so my mother would then be the beneficiary. She died a few years ago. So I guess I could have made my wife the new beneficiary. But I asked MassMutual how much she’d get if I died, and they said $2000.I guess $2000 was a lot more money back in the 1950s when the policy was taken out. Today, it barely covers one month of our Waikiki rent. And I have other life insurance, so I “surrendered” the policy, and this week I received $1400 from them. So thanks, Dad. Gee, are there yet more insurance policies floating around out there that I’ve never heard of? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/letter-from-insurance-company-legitimate-or-scam/787758.md?page=1)