Many state legislatures have not made this technical distinction between Viatical Settlements and Life Settlements, the latter dealing with non-terminally ill insureds. It is important for the practitioner to understand the technical difference and to not be misled by possible misnomers contained.
Examples of important Life Settlement topics covered by CPE Nasba approved seminar presented by Integrity Life Solutions, LLC – “Life Settlements: Introduction and Best Practices”
Viaticum. Definition. Eucharist given to a dying person; last rites.
As you will learn in a CPE course entitled “Life Settlements: Introduction and Best Practices” (presented by Integrity Life Solutions, LLC, Maplewood, NJ) the life settlement industry sprung from the AIDs crisis in the 1980s and 1990s. A Viatical Settlement is the purchase of a life insurance policy by an investor where the insured of the policy is terminally ill, generally defined as less than a two-year life expectancy. While the IRS does not define a Viatical Settlement, per se, the Code makes a distinction for tax purposes between life insurance settlements on insureds who have a life expectancy of less than two years, and life insurance settlements on insureds with LEs of greater than two years – the former transaction resulting in no taxable gain (as if they had died and the beneficiaries had received the proceeds of the death benefit on the policy.)
Also mentioned in the Free CPE course, is that ironically, many state legislatures have not made this technical distinction between Viatical Settlements and Life Settlements, the latter dealing with non-terminally ill insureds. Many state statutes regulating this area are generically called Viatical Settlement statute, even though they include the regulation of what are technically Life Settlements. Such statutes such as the recent one in New York, may have initially covered true Viatical Settlement cases, and then later were either amended or otherwise changed to include Life Settlement cases. It is important for the practitioner to understand the technical difference and to not be misled by possible misnomers contained even in state laws. (This again will be more fully explained in the Integrity Free CPE webinar or in person seminar.) Perhaps the IRS “got it right” in that the Code does not label the transaction type one or the other, but merely promulgated regulations based upon facts and circumstances.
Life Settlements, which in essence therefore sprung from Viatical Settlements, have also been tainted in some measure by the legacy of the early history of the Viatical industry, which left hundreds or more of investors, investing in excess of perhaps one billion dollars in viatical settlement policies, holding the bag. Mutual Benefits, a Viatical Settlement company based in Florida, was the largest of these failures, selling a projected profit stream on viaticated policies, that never came to fruition, in some measure because AIDs patients refused to die as they was projected. Thus, at once, the macabre and ghoulish nature of Viatical Settlements and later on Life Settlements, joined with the poor reputation earned by the Viatical industry on the investment side. The Life Settlements industry today is no doubt still living this tainted reputation down.
