Final Expense Insurance in Georgia

Georgia is unusual, and in a good way. Where most states let a funeral home keep a slice of your prepaid money up front, Georgia law generally requires that 100 percent of the trustable funds go into a trust account. So the usual warning about prepaid funerals lands differently here. The money is well guarded. The question worth asking in Georgia is a different one: what is that money obligated to do, and how much of it exists on the day your family needs it?

Georgia Guards Preneed Money Better Than Most States

Preneed arrangements here fall under the Georgia Cemetery and Funeral Services Act of 2000, and preneed dealers register with the Georgia Secretary of State. The trust rules are strict. A registered preneed dealer generally has to deposit the full amount of the trustable funds into an insured account within 30 days of the end of the month the payment came in, and the trustee files a yearly financial report with the state.

Two more provisions are worth knowing. If the funeral establishment does not end up providing the services, the trust money is generally refundable to the purchaser's designee or the estate, minus any taxes owed and a 3 percent administrative charge. And if a funeral home fails to deposit or maintain those funds, Georgia law allows the establishment owners and the funeral director to be held personally liable for the shortfall.

Compared with states that trust 70 percent or less, that is a genuinely strong consumer protection. Anyone who tells you a Georgia prepaid plan is a trap has not read the statute.

What The Trust Rules Do Not Cover

Protecting the dollars is not the same as protecting the outcome. A preneed agreement is still a contract with one funeral establishment for one set of goods and services, and three ordinary things can put your family sideways with it.

• The service happens somewhere else. A family in Savannah signs a contract there, then a daughter in Marietta or a son in Chattanooga becomes the person handling everything. Moving the agreement to another provider is a negotiation, not a right.
• The money only equals what you paid in. A trust account funded with three monthly installments holds three monthly installments. If the need comes early, the trust is not going to cover a service.
• The account is conservative by law. Georgia limits these trusts to insured deposits and government obligations, which is exactly right for safety and is not designed to keep pace with rising funeral costs over twenty years.

There is also the 3 percent and the taxes. Small in isolation, and worth knowing about before you decide the two options are identical.

How Final Expense Insurance Works Differently In Georgia

Final expense insurance in Georgia is a small permanent life insurance policy. You own it, you name the beneficiary, and the death benefit is paid in cash to that person. No funeral home is a party to it.

The practical difference shows up in three places:

• The full benefit is there early. Once the policy is in force and past any waiting period on a guaranteed issue plan, the benefit is the face amount, not the sum of the premiums paid so far.
• It travels. The money works the same whether the service is in Columbus, in Atlanta, or back in the state your mother grew up in.
• It covers more than the funeral. Families are usually handling a last hospital bill, a property tax notice, a car payment, and travel for relatives in the same month. Whatever the service does not use belongs to the beneficiary.

The trade honestly stated: premiums are paid for life on most designs, and the rate depends on your age and health at the time you apply. Pricing and available riders vary by carrier and by state.

A Reasonable Way For Georgia Families To Decide

Start with what you actually want. Price the disposition you have in mind at two or three local providers, since a direct cremation in Macon and a traditional service with a plot in Alpharetta are different numbers. Then add a cushion for travel and the bills that arrive in the first month.

From there the choice usually sorts itself out. If you want a specific funeral home to be locked in on price and detail, and you can fund it in full now, Georgia's trust rules make a preneed contract a reasonable thing to do. If you would rather your family hold the money and make the call, or you expect anyone in the family to move, a policy that pays cash tends to fit better. Plenty of Georgia families do a modest version of both.

Cornerstone Protection Group is licensed in Georgia and in fifteen other states. We can walk through final expense coverage with you, or talk about whether a fuller whole life policy makes more sense given your age and health. If you want a straight answer about what you would qualify for, book a short call and we will go through it without any pressure. Our overview of burial insurance compared with final expense coverage is a useful place to start reading.