A life insurance policy can remain in effect for 50 years or more... so how can it remain relevant? Your goals and objectives may have changed, your wife or husband may have changed, your child may have predeceased you or you may have accumulated a bunch of assets and need additional insurance or changes to the policy may have arisen.

All too often, insurance policies are put in a sock drawer or safe deposit box and forgotten. Often times insurance policies aren't ever reviewed. To ensure that the life insurance policy is relevant, worth its premiums and purposeful in a estate-planning sense, advisers should review and make recommendations for appropriate changes to the life insurance policy or take remedial action to correct any defects or deficiencies that are discovered.

For individually held or ILIT held policies, initially, the attorney or adviser should urge the client to make an inventory of all life insurance policies, whether or not the client thinks they are in-force or valid. A file table should be created noting:

(1) the name of the issuing insurance company or companies;

(2) the issue date and effective date (if different);

(3) the names of the owner(s), the names of the insured (including their health ratings);

(4) the names and status of the beneficiaries;

(4) the type of insurance policy (that is, term, universal or whole life);

(5) a description of any riders;

(6) the current death benefit; and

(7) the annual premium and modal premium (if different).

For life insurance policies that are owned by an ILIT, the attorney or adviser should get and review a copy of the trust instrument. At the same time, the attorney or adviser should request in-force illustrations for each in-force policy. The in-force illustration will show a projection of future premiums, cash values and death benefits based on the current dividend scale (whole life) or current interest rates and current costs of insurance (universal life). For variable universal life policies, the in-force illustration will be based on a hypothetical earnings rate such as 7 percent and current (plus guaranteed maximum) cost of insurance. The attorney or adviser should also review the file containing the original application and illustration, if available.