Bob Graham, Executive Editor

So the annual Life Insurance Awareness Month ended with a bang Tuesday with news that actor Heath Ledger’s life insurance company, ReliaStar Life Insurance, is being sued in Los Angeles for not paying $10 million in benefits to his 2-year-old daughter Matilda Rose.

It seems the insurance company thinks the 28-year-old Australian actor found dead in his New York apartment in January may have committed suicide or lied on paperwork, either of which, of course, would mean no payout. Authorities ruled his death accidental from an overdose of painkillers and other medicines.

Ledger, who portrayed the Joker in the movie The Dark Knight, took out the policy from the Minnesota firm, which is now investigating its concerns, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Heath Ledger, suicide allegations, an insurance company being sued - these elements will generate some much needed interest in life insurance and its many, varied nuances. If only the organizers of Life Insurance Awareness Month had been able to push this story instead of how singer, actor and producer Donnie Wahlberg, who fronted this year’s Life Insurance Awareness Month campaign, helped a nephew after Wahlberg’s sister, Debbie, died suddenly without live insurance, according to an article at IFAwebnews.com. Wahlberg is best known for his work in the 1990s and now with the band New Kids on the Block.

Whether it’s Walhberg or Ledger, life insurance agents will welcome any attention paid to life insurance because sales are pancake flat, and an estimated 68 million adult Americans have no life insurance at all, and most of those with coverage have far less than experts recommend.
One can only hope that in the media’s portrayal of the Ledger situation some accuracy and information about how life insurance works is included in the media’s coverage.