Six Ways to Cover What You Leave Behind, and Who Each One Accepts
No medical exam and no health questions are not the same promise, and the gap between them decides whether you are accepted. Most of the coverage on this page skips the exam. Only guaranteed acceptance skips the questions, and that comes with a smaller death benefit and a two-year graded period: if death occurs in the first twenty four months from anything other than an accident, the policy returns your premiums plus ten percent rather than the face amount.
Every carrier explains what its own product does. Almost none of them publish who gets turned down. That is the only question that matters if you have already been declined somewhere, or you are past seventy, or you are three years clear of a cancer diagnosis and nobody will give you a straight answer about it.
So this page is arranged around acceptance rather than price. Six options, what each actually costs, and the age limits, health questions and waiting periods that decide whether it is available to you at all.
This page contains affiliate links. Buying through one may pay Memorial Merits a commission, and it never changes your price. We only list coverage we have checked ourselves, and the age limits, health questions and waiting periods below are published whether they help the provider or not.
In Short
- What this is: six ways to cover what you leave behind, arranged by who each one accepts rather than by price.
- What it costs to use: nothing. Prices shown are each provider’s own published starting point.
- Cheapest starting price here: about $3.65 a month, depending on your age and how much coverage you choose.
- If you have been declined before: guaranteed acceptance asks no health questions between ages 50 and 80, with a two-year graded benefit explained in full below.
- The column carriers do not print: age limits, health questions and waiting periods, side by side for all six.
- How the links work: the button in each listing goes to the provider. The line under it opens our full review of that option.
Jump Straight to What Applies to You
Coverage first, then who actually gets accepted, then how much you need, then all six side by side.
No-Exam Term Income From a Payout Who Gets Accepted How Much You Need Compare All Six
Working out your number? Use a tool instead of reading. Free, no email, under two minutes each.
- Funeral Cost CalculatorWhat a funeral actually costs in your state, which is the piece most people guess at when sizing coverage
- Inherited Annuity Tax CalculatorWhat a payout leaves after tax, before anyone decides how to take it
Term Coverage Without a Medical Exam
Term insurance is the cheapest way to cover a mortgage, a child’s remaining years at home, or the income somebody else is counting on. You buy a fixed number of years, you pay a level premium, and if you outlive the term the policy simply ends. That last part is what makes it inexpensive, and it is also why term is the wrong tool for a funeral you expect to be decades away.
All three options here skip the medical exam for most applicants, which cuts the wait from six weeks to about twenty minutes. Skipping the exam is not the same as skipping underwriting. Each still asks health questions and still checks prescription and motor vehicle records, so an answer you give here can still lead to a decline or a higher rate. What it removes is the nurse visit and the blood draw, not the assessment.
Ladder: Coverage You Can Lower Later Without Reapplying ★
The only policy here that shrinks as your obligations do, and the premium follows it down.
Most term policies are a decision you make once at the worst possible moment for guessing, when the mortgage is largest and the children are smallest, and then you overpay for it for twenty years. Ladder lets you reduce coverage later without a new application and drops the premium to match, so the policy tracks the debt instead of the day you signed. Applications finish online, no exam is required up to three million, and the policies are written by established carriers rather than by Ladder itself.
- Coverage from $100,000 to $8 million, for applicants aged 20 to 60
- No medical exam up to $3 million, with a free at-home health check above that
- From about $5 a month for a 20 year old buying $100,000 on a ten year term
- Coverage adjustable downward without reapplying, and the premium follows it
- Policies written by carriers including Amica Life and Fidelity Security Life, with a 30-day money-back guarantee
Ethos: Term in Twenty Minutes, Plus a Path If You Are Declined ★
The one option here that covers both ends, working-age term and guaranteed acceptance for older applicants.
Ethos is the widest single door on this page. Term runs twenty to sixty five with no medical exam and an application most people finish in about twenty minutes, and estate planning documents come with the policy rather than as an upsell. What separates it is what happens if term does not work out: Ethos also places guaranteed issue whole life through TruStage for ages forty five to eighty five with no health questions at all, so an applicant who is declined for term does not have to start over somewhere else.
- Term coverage $25,000 to $3 million, ages 20 to 65, on terms of 10 to 40 years
- No medical exam, and most applications finish in about twenty minutes
- Estate planning documents included alongside the policy at no extra cost
- Guaranteed issue whole life through TruStage, ages 45 to 85, $2,000 to $25,000, no health questions
- 30-day money-back guarantee. Available in every state except New York
Everyday Life: One Application, Several Carriers Compared ★
The cheapest starting price on this page, and it tells you how much to buy rather than asking.
The usual problem with comparing carriers is that comparing them properly means applying to each one. Everyday Life runs a single application against several top-rated carriers and returns what each would offer, which removes the part of this process people abandon halfway through. It also does something none of the others do: it recommends a coverage amount and a policy type based on your household rather than handing you a slider and wishing you luck. Starting prices here are the lowest on the page.
- Term coverage from $25,000 to $500,000, over terms of ten to thirty years
- Whole life available with death benefits from $5,000 to $50,000
- Starting around $3.65 a month depending on age and coverage chosen
- Several top-rated carriers compared through one application, no exam for most policies
- Recommends the coverage amount and the policy type instead of leaving you to guess
Turning a Payout Into Income That Lasts
A death benefit arrives as one number, and for a surviving spouse that is a harder problem than it sounds. A lump sum has to be turned into something that covers the next twenty or thirty years, and it usually arrives at the exact moment nobody in the household is in a state to make a decision about it. The most common mistake is not a bad investment. It is spending eighteen months paralysed and letting the money sit while inflation works on it.
This is the one entry here that is not insurance at all. It is a conversation with a licensed retirement income specialist about converting a lump sum into guaranteed monthly income, and it costs nothing. If a payout has already landed, read our inherited annuity tax calculator first, because what a payout leaves after tax changes what you should do with it.
Annuity.org: What to Do With a Payout Once It Arrives ★
A free conversation about turning one lump sum into income that does not run out.
A death benefit is a single number that has to last twenty or thirty years, and it lands on somebody who is in no state to plan anything. This is not a policy and there is nothing to buy. It is a consultation with a licensed retirement income specialist about whether converting some of a lump sum into guaranteed monthly income makes sense for the household, which is a question worth answering deliberately rather than by leaving the money in a checking account for eighteen months.
- Free consultation with a licensed retirement income specialist
- Covers converting a lump sum into guaranteed monthly income for life
- Built for a surviving spouse or an inheritor deciding what to do with a payout
- No cost to you and no obligation to buy anything at the end of it
Who Actually Gets Accepted, and What Gets You Declined
This is the section the rest of the internet leaves out, so here it is plainly.
Age is the first gate, and it is absolute
Ladder writes for ages twenty to sixty. Ethos writes term for twenty to sixty five, and its guaranteed issue whole life through TruStage runs forty five to eighty five. Gerber Life’s guaranteed acceptance covers fifty to eighty. Nothing on this page is available above eighty five, and above about seventy your realistic options narrow to the guaranteed acceptance products with their smaller face amounts. If you are shopping for a parent, check their age against those bands before you read another word about price.
Health questions decide the rest
No-exam term still asks about your health, and the answers matter. A controlled condition managed for years often prices normally. An uncontrolled one, a recent hospitalization, or a diagnosis inside the last twelve months frequently does not. We covered how underwriters actually read these answers in our guide to life insurance with pre-existing conditions, including which conditions are routinely approved and which ones send an application to a manual reviewer.
Cancer is the case people ask about most and get the least straight talk on. Most carriers look at the type, the stage, and how long you have been clear rather than the word itself, and many will write standard coverage after a defined remission period. Being declined once does not mean being uninsurable, and it does not mean guaranteed acceptance is your only remaining option. It means the next application should go somewhere that underwrites your situation differently.
Guaranteed acceptance is the floor, and it has a cost
Guaranteed acceptance asks no health questions at all. Your age and your willingness to pay are the entire application, which is why it exists and why it is the right answer for somebody who has been turned down repeatedly. The trade is real and worth understanding before you buy: coverage tops out around twenty five thousand dollars, premiums run higher per dollar of benefit than underwritten coverage, and the graded death benefit means a non-accidental death inside the first two years returns premiums plus ten percent instead of the face amount. Accidental death pays in full from day one, and after twenty four months the full benefit pays regardless of cause. The version of this most readers have already been mailed is AARP burial insurance, whose caps, age bands and two-year terms we verified against the carrier and priced against real funeral costs.
None of that makes it a bad product. It makes it a specific product, for a specific person, and the person it is wrong for is somebody who would have qualified for underwritten coverage if they had applied to the right carrier first.
Before you buy from anyone
Check the carrier with your own state’s regulator. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners maintains a directory of every state insurance department, where you can confirm a company is licensed where you live and see whether complaints have been filed against it. Washington State’s Office of the Insurance Commissioner also publishes a plain-language consumer guide to life insurance that is useful regardless of which state you are in.
How Much Coverage You Actually Need
The industry answer is ten times your income, and it is a marketing number rather than a calculation. It ignores whether your mortgage is nearly paid, whether your children are two or nineteen, and whether your household has one earner or two. Sold to the wrong person it produces either a policy that leaves a family short or one they cannot afford to keep, and a lapsed policy protects nobody.
The honest version is arithmetic, and it takes about ten minutes on paper. Add what has to be paid off: the mortgage balance, any remaining loans, and the funeral itself, which our funeral cost calculator will price for your state rather than making you guess at a national average. Add what has to be replaced: the annual income your household would lose, multiplied by the years until the youngest child is independent or the surviving spouse reaches retirement, whichever runs longer. Then subtract what already exists: current savings, an employer policy, and any survivor benefits your household qualifies for.
What is left is the number to shop for. Two things people consistently get wrong on the way there. An employer policy is usually one or two times salary and it ends the day the job does, so it is a supplement rather than a plan. And the shortfall almost never sits where people expect it, which is why running the arithmetic beats accepting a multiple somebody quoted you.
How These Life Insurance Options Compare
Six options side by side, with the column the carrier sites do not print. Eligibility is where the real difference lives, and it is the column to read first if price is not what is actually stopping you.
| Option | Best for | Starting point | Who gets accepted | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ladder ★ | Coverage that can shrink later without a new application | $5/moRoughly, for a 20 year old buying $100,000 on a ten year term. Coverage runs $100,000 to $8 million. | Ages 20 to 60. No exam to $3 million, free at-home health check above that. Health questions still asked. | Go › |
| Ethos ★ | Term fast, and a guaranteed acceptance route if term is declined | $25kMinimum term coverage, up to $3 million on terms of 10 to 40 years. Estate planning documents included. | Term ages 20 to 65 with health questions. Guaranteed issue whole life ages 45 to 85, no health questions. Not sold in New York. | Go › |
| Everyday Life ★ | The lowest entry price, and it recommends the amount for you | $3.65/moDepending on age and coverage. Term $25,000 to $500,000, whole life $5,000 to $50,000. | Several carriers compared on one application. No exam for most policies. Health questions asked. | Go › |
| Annuity.org ★ | Deciding what to do with a payout that has already arrived | FreeNo cost and no obligation. A consultation about converting a lump sum into guaranteed monthly income. | No underwriting at all. This is advice about a payout, not a policy application. | Go › |
| Gerber Life | Anyone declined elsewhere who needs acceptance guaranteed | $5kMinimum coverage, to $25,000, with premiums fixed for life and cash value that builds. | Ages 50 to 80, no health questions. Graded benefit: non-accidental death inside 24 months returns premiums plus 10 percent. | Go › |
| The Swiftest | Seeing the whole field before choosing a single carrier | VariesRates come from whichever carrier you select. Term and permanent shown side by side. | Set by each carrier in the search. The button opens a comparison tool, not one company. | Go › |
Also Worth Knowing About
Two more options belong on the page without belonging at the top of it. Both are honest choices for the right person, and both come with something you should know before you click.
Gerber Life: Guaranteed Acceptance, and the Two-Year Rule
No health questions at any age between 50 and 80, with a graded benefit you need to understand first.
Gerber Life is the floor of this market and it is genuinely the right answer for somebody who has been declined more than once. Acceptance depends on age and nothing else. The trade is written into the policy: a non-accidental death inside the first twenty four months returns 110 percent of premiums paid rather than the face amount, and only after that does the full benefit pay regardless of cause. Accidental death pays in full from day one. Read our review before buying, because it also explains where Memorial Merits currently sends families looking for this coverage.
- Guaranteed acceptance, ages 50 to 80, with no health questions asked
- Coverage from $5,000 to $25,000 with premiums fixed for life
- Graded death benefit: non-accidental death in the first 24 months returns premiums plus 10 percent
- Accidental death pays the full benefit from day one, and the full benefit applies after two years
- Whole life, so it builds cash value you can borrow against if you need to
The Swiftest: A Multi-Carrier Search Rather Than a Single Quote
Thirty plus carriers in one search, and the button opens a comparison tool rather than one company.
Worth knowing what this button does before you press it, because it does not behave like the others on this page. The Swiftest is a comparison platform, so the click opens a search across more than thirty carriers with term and permanent policies shown side by side, and you then apply directly through whichever carrier you choose. It is useful when you have no idea which company fits and would rather see the field than pick a door. It is the wrong starting point if you already know you want no-exam term, because the three options higher up this page get you there in fewer steps.
- More than thirty carriers compared in a single search
- Term and permanent policies shown side by side rather than separately
- Many options available with no medical exam
- You apply directly through whichever carrier you choose at the end
Who Should Look Elsewhere
If you need more than about two million in coverage, or you own a business with partners, or your estate is large enough to face estate tax, the platforms here are the wrong instrument. That is a case for an independent broker who can shop a dozen carriers and structure a trust to own the policy. If you have a child with a disability receiving government benefits, do not name that child as a beneficiary on anything until you have spoken to an attorney, because a direct payout can end the benefits you were trying to protect.
And if you are here because somebody has already passed, almost nothing on this page helps you today. What helps is our step-by-step guide to filing a life insurance claim. If you suspect a policy exists but cannot find it, unclaimed benefits are searchable, and USA.gov maintains the official starting point for unclaimed money including insurance payouts.
My father, Monte, had triple bypass surgery while I was preparing to go to sea, and three days later he passed from aspiration complications. In the weeks after, the questions that mattered were never the ones I expected. They were small, procedural, and relentless, and every one of them arrived while nobody in the family was in any condition to answer it. Insurance does not solve grief and it never has. What it does is remove one line of questions from a week that is already full of them.
That is why this page tells you who gets declined, including on the products that pay us. A family that finds out at the claim about a waiting period nobody explained is a family we failed, and no commission is worth being the site that let that happen.
Getting Started With Life Insurance
If you want a sequence rather than a recommendation, this is the one we would give a friend.
Start with the age bands in the eligibility section, because they decide what is even available to you and they take ten seconds to check. Then run the arithmetic above to get your number, using the funeral cost calculator for the piece most people guess at. Only then compare, and compare on eligibility before price, because the cheapest policy you cannot qualify for is not a saving.
Once coverage is in place, tell somebody it exists. An unclaimed policy is one of the most common and most avoidable failures in this entire subject, and the fix costs nothing: write down the carrier and the policy number and put it where your family will find it. Our directory of vaults and organizers covers where that belongs. If the documents themselves are still missing, the online estate planning directory is the next stop, and our longer life insurance planning guide goes deeper on policy types than a comparison page can. Everything in this leg sits under the main legacy and estate planning directory.
Who Checked This List
Every option here was checked by Gabriel Killian, founder of Memorial Merits and a US Navy Certified Instructor, Missile Defense Systems. Memorial Merits has been cited by CBS, ABC and Fox for its end-of-life planning work.
Coverage ranges, age bands and starting prices come from each provider directly. Life insurance rates are quoted individually rather than published as a price list, so the figures here are starting points for a healthy applicant at the youngest eligible age, not what you will personally be quoted. Waiting periods and graded benefits are stated as each provider defines them, including where that makes an option look worse.
Provider terms last verified 21 August 2026. Reviewed every 90 days. Your own rate depends on age, health and the coverage you choose, and only an application returns it.
Life Insurance Questions Families Ask Most
How much life insurance do I need?
Add what has to be paid off, which is the mortgage, remaining loans and the funeral itself. Add what has to be replaced, which is the annual income your household would lose multiplied by the years until the youngest child is independent or the surviving spouse reaches retirement. Then subtract current savings, any employer policy and survivor benefits you qualify for. What remains is the number to shop for. The ten-times-income rule you have heard is a marketing figure, not a calculation.
How long does life insurance take to pay out?
Most claims on a policy in force more than two years pay within 30 to 60 days once the insurer has a certified death certificate and a completed claim form. Delays come from three places: a death inside the policy’s contestability period, which is usually the first two years and triggers a review of the original application; a missing or incorrect beneficiary designation; and a cause of death still under investigation. Filing quickly and completely is the single biggest thing within your control.
Is an online life insurance policy legitimate?
Yes. The policies are written by established insurance carriers regardless of which website you applied through, and they are regulated by your state insurance department the same as any other. Before buying from anyone, confirm the carrier is licensed in your state through your state insurance department, which also shows whether complaints have been filed against it.
Can I get life insurance with a pre-existing condition?
Usually, and often at a normal rate. Underwriters look at whether a condition is controlled, how recently it was diagnosed, and what your treatment history shows, rather than at the name of the condition. A condition managed steadily for years frequently prices normally. A diagnosis inside the last twelve months or a recent hospitalization is what tends to change the outcome. Being declined once does not mean being uninsurable; it means the next application should go to a carrier that underwrites your situation differently.
What is guaranteed acceptance life insurance and what is the catch?
It asks no health questions at all. Age and willingness to pay are the entire application, which is why it exists for people who have been declined repeatedly. The trade is written into the policy: coverage tops out around $25,000, premiums cost more per dollar of benefit, and a graded death benefit means a non-accidental death in the first 24 months returns premiums plus roughly 10 percent instead of the face amount. Accidental death pays in full from day one, and after two years the full benefit pays regardless of cause.
Does life insurance pay for a funeral?
It can, but not always in time. A standard policy pays the named beneficiary rather than the funeral home, and that money typically arrives 30 to 60 days after the claim, which is well after a funeral home expects payment. Families usually cover the funeral another way and reimburse themselves later. If paying for the funeral is the specific job, a smaller final expense or guaranteed acceptance policy is built for it, and some allow an assignment of benefits directly to the funeral home.
What is the difference between no medical exam and no health questions?
They are different promises and the distinction decides who is accepted. No medical exam means no nurse visit and no blood draw, but the insurer still asks health questions and still checks prescription and driving records, so a decline is still possible. No health questions means guaranteed acceptance, where nothing about your health is asked or considered. Most coverage on this page skips the exam. Only the guaranteed acceptance products skip the questions.
Is term or whole life better?
They answer different questions. Term replaces an income for a fixed number of years and is far cheaper per dollar of coverage, which makes it right when the goal is protecting a mortgage or children still at home. Whole life lasts your whole life and builds cash value, which makes it right when the goal is covering a funeral decades from now or leaving something guaranteed. Buying whole life for a temporary need is the most expensive common mistake in this category.
What does Memorial Merits earn from these listings?
On some of them the provider pays us a commission, which never adds anything to your price. It has no bearing on what appears here or in what order. The age limits, health questions and waiting periods above are stated as each provider defines them, including the ones that cost us money to print, because a family that discovers a waiting period at the claim is a family we failed.
