Dead peasant insurance is a slang term used to describe life insurance policies purchased by businesses on the lives of their ordinary employees for the express benefit of the company. In some cases, corporations have purchased these policies on the lives of their employees without their knowledge or consent.

Wal-Mart bought around 350,000 of these policies for employees around the United States. More often than not, the families of the deceased would not be told about the life insurance policies and would receive nothing from them when their relatives died.

The Florida Supreme Court is deciding whether Walmart widowers can sue the corporation for a share of the life insurance policies Walmart purchased in their wives' names. They want some of the $9.6 million the corporation collected when the insurance benefits were paid. May 7th, 2010.

shady practice / slippery slope IMO

I think all Insurance is a scam. Whats the difference in Walmart getting paid or the family? They played roulette and won

I dont disagree!

I thought you had to sign off of a life insurance policy. It also seems like when I bought mine if the beneficiary was gonna be someone other than my wife she had to sign off. Now that said when you get hired they very well may have signed something not knowing. I know a few who have been required by bank to carry a policy because they owe so damn much money its a problem. I know one person whose company does have a policy on him but he agreed and they have it because he is a significant revenue source for the company. He had to give up his Harley riding as part of the policy lol. It seems like walmart would not want to get involved in shady stuff like this.

maybe these are employees with some type of stock options or something that would execute on death and the company is hedging against them???

What’s next? Sports teams wanting a cut of your winnings?

Whoever pays the premium... Unless it's an agreed to benefit... Dan

Our company provides and insurance policy but we pick the beneficiary.

with a lot of insider info ... bet they know from just watching them at work which ones are a good bet to bite the bullet

… there is talk of expanding the program to include select customers

That's fairly standard. I always thought it was just a way for them to make extra money by packaging it with the health plan we provided at our old company. It paid 1 year base salary as a death benefit. Our workforce was so young that to my knowledge it paid out to one person in the 25 years. Add to that how short of time period many of the eligible employees stayed I'm sure their loss ratio was like .001 on it. They also charged the same no matter if the employee made 25k a year or 100k per year. As a side note when they did have to pay one they tried to get out of it claiming our payroll person didn't check the right box when the person took fmla prior to his death..... we threatened to move the entire group and they ended up paying. Insurance companies are pos

I remember sitting at a business dinner party about 10 years ago- 8 of us at the table, well an insurance man gets up to speak and the contractor next to me fairly loud says “insurance agents are scum”.. a few minutes later he introduces himself to the guy sitting on my other side who was my insurance broker…😆

They are scum, they basically tried to claim our guy was no longer an employee because he exercised his short term disability policy about 3 weeks before he died. I guess in their minds they weren't gonna pay unless you died at your desk. That was good old BCBS by the way

This is why Walmart still has a smoking area.

money maker!