Can a girlfriend or ex girlfriend take out an insurance policy against your death without your consent or without your participating knowledge and against your will or approval?
Is there criminal prosecution for ill intent, etc.
If so what are external factors that can be used to show ill intent which may lead to prosecution?
Can you sue at all for distress and unease of learning this?
Answer
Absent the existence of an "insurable interest" in the life of the person being insured, at the time of application, no life insurer should issue the policy and if one does, that life insurance policy will be voidable should the person die or a claim arise.
The purpose of the insurable interest rule is to prevent what is in essence gambling on the life of a stranger, with whom the applicant has no familial type or financial relationship with.
If she's just a plain girlfriend or ex-girl friend (and you should know the difference) that alone should not qualify. Of course, if she is the mother of a child you have in common, she's not just a girlfriend, and there would be substantial ties. You owe the child some duty of support, and her ability to insure your life to help assure some measure of support for the child should you die would not be unreasonable.
Most life insurers will still be skeptical of a girlfriend applying for coverage on your life and would require that you also complete an application for the life insurance. Unless the amount is relatively tiny, the life insurer would require you to answer some basic health questions and likely go through at least some underwriting -- at least a basic review of your health history.
Life insurers want to insure healthy risks -- people who are not likely to die prematurely when the policy is in effect. The larger the face amount of the life insurance, the more extensive and invasive that underwriting would be, including not only your height and weight, but often a paramedic exam and blood draw. If you don't want her to take out insurance, don't complete an application and don't cooperate. If you started to cooperate and have changed your mind, tell the insurance company whose forms you signed.
As for the police or a prosecutor wasting time on this -- which seems to involve a domestic dispute, forget about it. If you propose retaining a lawyer, no competent lawyer in his or her right mind would take on a civil case against her, certainly not on a contingency. Or look on the bright side. If she plans to kill you, and is found to have done so or played a role in having you killed, she would be legally unable to recover on the policy. And the existence of the life insurance policy alone would make her a suspect if anything happens to you. While that would not be much help to you, the police and prosecutors would be very interested.
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