Life Insurance Benefits
Sometime in the next month or so, you all will be receiving a mailing from American Income Life about their $3000 Accidental Death benefit. AIL is a good, union-friendly company that provides this benefit to us free of charge. The catch is, if you return one of their cards to them, they will contact you and ask you for an opportunity to talk to you about the other products that they offer. They do offer a ZOOM meeting for this now. If you don’t want to talk to them, you don’t have to return their card. If you do return their card, and they call you, you can say no to them about a meeting to talk about other products, and they are not supposed to call you again. The last few years they have been much better about not harassing our members. If you do have a bad experience with them, let us know. They will do a second mailing six or eight weeks after the first one.
The other thing we would like you to be aware of is that they make this mailing look like it comes from Stewart, from our office. This has always caused members to confuse their benefit, which is only for accidental death, with our Local’s own $2000 benefit, which we have our own card for (we do not receive or have copies of AIL’s cards). We are one of the last of the AFM Locals that are still maintaining this type of benefit for our members. If you are still a member in good standing at the time of your death, all your beneficiary needs to do is provide us with an original of the death certificate, and we will take care of the rest. We have a Death Benefit Fund set up in our own Musicians Federal Credit Union to which we contribute periodically from the General Fund, so it is a self-funded benefit, not connected with any insurance company.
We urge every member to make sure they have filled out and returned one of our beneficiary cards. We print one in every newsletter that you can cut out or copy. Fill it out and mail it to us, or scan and email it to me (apino@musiciansdfw.org). There is also one on the website that you can download, fill out, sign, and upload. Make sure that the card is signed, otherwise it is not legally valid! These cards are good for 20 years, so if you think you have not filled one out in that amount of time, please check with me. You can also check your profile page on the website to see who is listed as your beneficiary (this is visible only to you, it is not public). If your card is more than 20 years old, or if you never do fill one out, the benefit can still be paid to your estate, just not to a specific beneficiary. However, it is much better to designate a specific beneficiary on our card, as this makes it much easier for them to receive the money (a check to an estate requires a probated will, for example, and an actual account for the estate). So even if you don’t designate a beneficiary, please let someone in your family know about this benefit.
I also would like to give a friendly reminder to you all to please keep me updated with any changes in your contact information, whether it is email, phone number, or mailing address. Also, please keep my email address in your contacts, as that is where your dues reminders come from, in addition to those printed in every e-newsletter.