It was not suicide, that I know for a fact. And I thank you for the kind words.
Condolences on the death of your daughter. Nobody should die that young.
I wish I'd seen your first post earlier because I spent 35 years in the insurance industry and I'm about to tell you a few things that may contradict my learned colleagues.
Ok, they want her medical records. Is it common practice for an insurance company to ask to review medical records for an insured for a policy that is 6 years old?
Most assuredly not.
The first thing I want you to do is get the policy and find the
Incontestability provision. It's usually within the first few pages of the policy and reads something like this:
"After this policy has been in force during the lifetime of the insured for 2 years from the policy date we cannot contest it except for non-payment of premiums when due."
In the end they have to pay you the death benefit regardless of cause of death. One exception would be if you killed her but that's apparently not the case here. Even with suicide, with most life insurance policies, the death benefit is fully payable if the suicide didn't occur within the first 2 years.
There's no need for you to release any medical records as long as you don't mind waiting for the revised death certificate that will show the cause of death.
Besides, without the toxicology report, the medical records might not help.
If you aren't comfortable signing, then don't. The death certificate will be updated anyway and you can submit it to the insurance company.
Why is the funeral making the claim? You're the beneficiary. The money is yours unless you assigned the death benefit to the funeral home when you signed the claim form. If you knowingly did that, fine.
If you have any other questions about the insurance process let me know.
We have one person who posts here regularly who is a retired insurance adjuster (although it has seemed to me that he did not commonly handle life claims, but I don't know that for sure).
Actually, I did. I spent several years investigating contestable death claims (deaths that occurred within the first two years of the policy).
He will likely chime in at some point.
Consider me chimed.
I can't conceive of any reason why you wouldn't. Refusing to cooperate will make it much more likely that the insurer will deny the claim. You would then have to make the choice between letting it go or filing a lawsuit over a relatively small policy.
That's a little extreme, Z. Declining to release medical records while a revised death certificate is coming is not the "refusal to cooperate" that creates problems.
Their desire to see the medical records might be related to their belief that her medical history belies what was originally revealed during the application process.
There is no such belief when the policy is beyond the contestability period.
CBG's supposition is more accurate but the medical records are a waste of time. Will likely take a few weeks to get them from the doctors and hospital by which time the revised death certificate should be available anyway.