Family is at the centre of our lives, whether that’s a party of two, or a full house. Our strongest emotional connections are with the person whom we have chosen to build a loving home, and the children we bring into that relationship. Indeed, it’s the children who quickly become the focus. We pick them up from scrapes and bruises, dry their tears and comfort them with hugs. But do we do enough to protect them from the greater harm they will suffer if we’re not there?

Along with its social purpose, family also serves a critically important economic function. Beyond the simplistic couples’ math that two can live cheaper than one, the lives of all family members are enriched when parents contribute their personal talents and productive capabilities to build a strong, dependable financial foundation. But the flipside of dependable is dependency. If a parent dies, the immediate financial strain can be crippling, with the spectre of uncertainty ahead.

It’s always good to have an emergency fund to deal with lesser emergencies, but that will likely fall well short in the case of someone’s death. Life insurance pools the low probability risk of any one person’s death across a broad population of people, to make each policyholder’s premium cost small in proportion to the expected death benefit. The TAX-FREE death benefit can be invested and drawn upon to replace lost earnings, providing direct financial relief that also buys time to heal.

An employed parent may have workplace life insurance of 1 to 3 times earnings. While helpful in the short term, the family budget belt will inevitably tighten. The full measure is how long the deceased would have worked and contributed to the family. Or for the non-working parent, it’s the replacement cost of previously unpaid labour, plus the reduced work availability or inclination of a grieving widow. Coverage is on each parent (i.e., not joint), to align proceeds with the expected need at either death.