Suicide & Life Insurance Claim

The widow of a 49-year-old architect who unexpectedly took his own life has appealed to an insurance company to treat her family “fairly and with compassion” after it used its small print to decline her £338,000 life insurance claim. Had his death happened eight days later, the company would almost certainly have paid the claim.

Billie Lee-Smith, who has two daughters aged 10 and 16, now faces having to sell what she thought was her and her husband Tony’s dream home. They had taken out the policy with the insurer Aegon, which was designed to pay off their mortgage should anything happen to either of them.

Aegon has declined to pay the life-changing claim on the basis of its suicide clause. Its life policies, along with those of most other insurers, have a term that states they will not pay out where the insured person takes their own life within the first 12 months of cover. Lee-Smith’s husband died eight days short of the clause’s expiry.

Insurers impose such terms to prevent people taking out life cover with a premeditated plan to solve their financial difficulties by taking their own lives. A year is generally considered more than enough time to prevent such claims from arising.

The couple only became Aegon customers when they bought a new home in Truro in October 2019, and were advised to upgrade their life cover for their newly increased mortgage. Had they stayed with their previous life cover provider of many years, that policy would have paid out.

Lee-Smith says her husband had no history of mental health problems or depression, and was a successful architect and company director. They had good incomes and at the time had no financial worries. His death came completely out of nowhere, and even to this day she says she has no idea what caused it.