The Insurable Interest in a Life Insurance Policy

To stop your good neighbor Sam from taking out a life insurance policy on you and then killing you to get the life insurance money, your neighbor, as the purchaser of the insurance policy, must have an insurable interest in the life of you, the person being insured at the time of application. In dealing with life insurance, a person is deemed to have insurable interest when the purchaser has a reasonable expectation of profit or benefit from the continued life of the insured.
Every state requires that an insurable interest exist at the time of application. Policies issued on lives where there is no insurable interest are regarded as void from the beginning because they are against public policy. They are against public policy because they encourage murder for profit. If there was no insurable interest requirement, some people would be tempted to purchase life insurance policies to collect the death benefit by killing the insured.
A person is always considered to have an unlimited insurable interest in his own life and health. Therefore, the beneficiaries of the policies that an insured purchases on his own life do not need to have an insurable interest. It is presumed that the insured would name as a beneficiary only people who want the insured to live a long and healthy life. A person, therefore, can obtain as much insurance as he wishes on himself – subject to other limits an insurance company might have. For example, insurance companies commonly limit the amount of insurance they will place on a person to that appropriate to his income and life style.