August 7, 2026
3:25 pm

Can You Sell a Great Western Life Survivorship (Second-to-Die) Policy? (2026)

A survivorship policy can be sold, but it is the hardest category in the secondary market to place, and offers run materially below what a single-life policy of the same face amount would fetch. The reason is structural, not a negotiating position: the death benefit is not payable until both insureds have died, so a buyer must underwrite two people, model joint mortality, and fund premiums until the later of two deaths.

That single fact drives everything else. Fewer providers bid on survivorship files. The pricing models are less standardized. And the range between the high and low offer on the same policy is usually wider than on a single-life case, which makes shopping the file through more than one buyer more important here than anywhere else.

The good news is that many second-to-die policies now sitting in irrevocable trusts were purchased to solve a problem that no longer exists for the family that bought them. If the trust is paying premiums on coverage nobody needs, doing nothing is a decision too — and usually the most expensive one available.

In This Article

What a Second-to-Die Contract Actually Promises
Why Two Life Expectancies Push the Price Down
The 2026 Estate Tax Picture and the Orphaned Policy Problem
When One Insured Has Already Died
Trust Ownership: Who Signs and What Has to Happen First
Identifying the Great Western Entity Before You Request Anything
Contestability, Insurable Interest, and Timing
Frequently Asked Questions

Can You Sell a Great Western Life Survivorship (Second-to-Die) Policy? (2026)

What a Second-to-Die Contract Actually Promises

A survivorship policy insures two lives — nearly always spouses, occasionally business partners — under one contract, with the death benefit payable only after the second insured dies. Because the insurer’s payout is deferred until the later death, premiums are much lower than two individual policies of the same combined face amount, and underwriting is more forgiving. Carriers have historically issued survivorship coverage where one insured was uninsurable on their own, pricing the healthier life to carry the case.

The classic purpose was estate liquidity. A couple with an illiquid estate — a farm, a closely held business, real estate — bought a second-to-die policy inside an irrevocable life insurance trust so that when the second spouse died and federal estate tax came due nine months later, cash existed to pay it without a forced sale. The design is elegant, and for the families that still face a taxable estate it remains sound.

The complication is that these are long-lived contracts sold into a tax environment that has changed repeatedly. A policy issued in 1999, when the federal estate tax exemption was $650,000 per person, was solving a real and near-certain liability. The same family in 2026 may face no federal estate tax at all. The policy is still in force, the trust is still writing premium checks, and nobody has revisited the plan in twenty years.

Why Two Life Expectancies Push the Price Down

In a single-life settlement, a buyer commissions life expectancy reports from independent medical underwriting firms, and the resulting estimate — expressed in months, with a mortality multiplier against a standard table — drives the price. The shorter the estimate, the sooner the death benefit is collected and the fewer premiums the buyer pays.

On a survivorship case, the buyer must estimate the distribution of the second death. Two life expectancy reports are commissioned instead of one, and the results are combined under a joint-mortality model. The mathematical consequence is unavoidable: the second death in a pair is expected considerably later than either individual death, and the outcome is less predictable. Later payout plus greater uncertainty plus more premium to carry equals a lower bid.

Two practical effects follow. First, the population of buyers shrinks — some providers simply do not price survivorship at all, and a broker who only works with a narrow set of funders may report “no market” when a wider search would produce a bid. Second, the health profile that makes a survivorship case work is specific: it is not enough for one insured to be impaired. The survivor’s health is what governs, because the survivor is the one whose death triggers payment. A couple where the healthier spouse is 68 and in excellent condition is a hard case, however impaired the other spouse may be. Our overview of how life expectancy underwriting works explains what the reports contain.

The 2026 Estate Tax Picture and the Orphaned Policy Problem

The federal estate tax exemption has moved dramatically over the life of these contracts. It was $675,000 per person in 2001, $3.5 million in 2009, and the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 roughly doubled the inflation-adjusted amount, reaching $13.99 million per individual in 2025. Legislation enacted in July 2025 set the basic exclusion amount at $15 million per individual beginning in 2026, indexed for inflation thereafter, and removed the scheduled reduction that planners had been drafting around. With portability of a deceased spouse’s unused exclusion, a married couple can shelter roughly double that amount.

The result is that a large share of survivorship policies bought to pay federal estate tax now insure a liability their owners will never incur. That does not automatically mean the policy should go. Several reasons to keep it survive the tax change:

State-level estate or inheritance taxes, which have far lower thresholds in states that impose them.
Equalizing inheritances when one child will receive the business or the farm and the others need cash.
Funding a buy-sell agreement that is still operative.
Charitable intent, or simply a legacy the family wants funded.
Liquidity for an estate that genuinely cannot be divided without a sale.

What has changed is that keeping the policy is now a choice that should be re-justified rather than assumed. When the original purpose is gone and premiums are a real burden on the trust, the alternatives deserve a genuine comparison — see how a settlement fits alongside existing ILIT planning.

Fact pattern	Effect on marketability	What to do
Both insureds living, survivor healthy and under 70	Poor — few or no bids	Consider reducing face or a paid-up option; revisit later
Both living, healthier insured 78+ with impairments	Possible; shop to multiple providers	Order both life expectancy reports and market broadly
One insured deceased	Substantially better — prices as single life	File the death certificate, get a fresh in-force illustration
Policy under two years old	Not marketable	Wait out the contestability period
Trust owns the policy, trustee authority unclear	Delays, not a bar	Confirm trustee powers and beneficiary consent first
Estate no longer taxable, premiums straining the trust	Depends on health	Re-justify the coverage before renewing the gift plan

The 2026 Estate Tax Picture and the Orphaned Policy Problem

When One Insured Has Already Died

A first death changes the analysis more than any other single event, and it changes it in the policyholder’s favor.

Once one insured has died, the contract is functionally a single-life policy on the survivor. A buyer now underwrites one life, with a shorter and more predictable expected payout date. Survivorship policies routinely become marketable at that point when they were not before, and the improvement in price can be substantial.

Several housekeeping items follow immediately after a first death, and they are frequently neglected:

Notify the carrier and file the death certificate. Many survivorship contracts change their premium or charge structure at the first death, and some contain a first-death benefit or premium adjustment. You need the carrier’s confirmation of the post-first-death premium in writing.
Request a fresh in-force illustration. The one from before the first death no longer reflects the contract’s actual cost structure. Ask for both current and guaranteed-maximum versions; see what an in-force illustration shows.
Review the trust’s continuing obligations. Crummey withdrawal notices, annual gifts, and trustee accounting requirements do not stop.
Re-run the purpose test. If the surviving spouse’s estate is well under the exemption, the original reason for the coverage may have expired along with the first insured.

One caution: a first death sometimes reveals that the policy was underfunded and has been drifting toward lapse for years. Find that out on your schedule, not in a grace-period notice.

Trust Ownership: Who Signs and What Has to Happen First

Most survivorship policies are owned by an irrevocable life insurance trust, and the trust document — not the insureds’ preference — controls what can be done.

The trustee is the policy owner and the only party who can sell, surrender, or change the policy. If the trustee is a family member who has never administered a transaction, expect to slow down. The trustee’s obligations typically include reviewing whether the trust instrument authorizes a sale, whether selling serves the beneficiaries’ interests, and whether the trustee must notify or obtain consent from beneficiaries before acting. Many states permit a nonjudicial settlement agreement or a virtual representation agreement to document beneficiary consent without going to court; some situations still require court approval.

Buyers will ask for the complete trust instrument with all amendments, evidence of the trustee’s appointment and acceptance, the trust’s taxpayer identification number, and often a legal opinion or certification that the trustee has authority to sell. Gaps in the file are the most common cause of delay on trust-owned cases — missing amendments, a successor trustee who never formally accepted, or a trust that has quietly become unfunded.

Crummey history deserves particular attention. The withdrawal-right mechanism validated in Crummey v. Commissioner, 397 F.2d 82 (9th Cir. 1968), is what allows gifts to the trust to qualify for the annual gift tax exclusion — $19,000 per recipient in 2025, indexed for inflation. Trustees who never sent the notices have an exposure worth discussing with counsel before they add a policy sale to the file. Our guidance on selling a trust-owned policy covers the sequence in detail, and whether beneficiaries must consent addresses the question trustees ask first.

Identifying the Great Western Entity Before You Request Anything

The name on a survivorship contract is worth verifying carefully, because several companies have used similar names in different states and one of them has never been a survivorship carrier at all.

Great Western Insurance Company is a Utah-domiciled company based in Ogden, regulated by the Utah Insurance Department, whose business has centered on pre-need funeral funding and small-face final expense coverage. Global Atlantic Financial Group acquired it in 2020, and Global Atlantic became a wholly owned subsidiary of KKR in January 2024. A second-to-die estate planning contract is not characteristic of that block.

Great-West Life & Annuity Insurance Company, with the hyphen, was domiciled in Colorado under the Colorado Division of Insurance and transferred its individual life and annuity business to Protective Life Insurance Company effective June 1, 2019. If Protective is sending the bills, that is the lineage. A related live page covers the Great-West survivorship block specifically.

The Great-West Life Assurance Company of Winnipeg amalgamated into The Canada Life Assurance Company on January 1, 2020; Canadian contracts do not trade in the U.S. secondary market.

We can confirm these in-force blocks exist. We cannot confirm a currently marketed retail survivorship product sold under the exact name “Great Western Life,” so treat your contract as part of an in-force block rather than assuming a current product line. The NAIC company code on the specifications page, checked at the NAIC Consumer Information Source, resolves it definitively.

Contestability, Insurable Interest, and Timing

Every state requires an incontestability provision, and the standard period is two years from the policy’s issue date. Within that window the carrier may rescind for material misrepresentation on the application. On a survivorship contract with two sets of application answers, there are two sets of potential misstatements, which is one reason buyers will not touch a policy still inside its contestability period. Practically, no legitimate provider bids on a contract in its first two years. If your policy is recent, the answer is to wait, not to shop it. See how the contestability period works.

Insurable interest is the other threshold question. The policy must have been validly issued at inception, with a genuine relationship between the insureds and the original owner. Contracts manufactured for resale — stranger-originated life insurance — are void from the start in most states and are not saleable at any price. A survivorship policy inside a family ILIT funded by real gifts from the insureds is ordinary, legitimate planning, and its later sale does not make it STOLI. The distinction is what happened at issue.

Timing also interacts with health. Because the survivor’s mortality governs pricing, a case that produced no bids two years ago can become viable after a material change in the healthier insured’s condition. Files are worth revisiting rather than treating a past “no” as permanent. A free policy review at Pine Lake Life Solutions starts with the policy cover page and the trust document, costs nothing, and includes telling you plainly when the market is not there.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can we sell if only one spouse wants to?

The owner sells, not the insureds. If a trust owns the policy, the trustee decides subject to the trust terms. If the spouses own it jointly, both owners must sign. In every case both insureds must sign HIPAA authorizations releasing medical records and complete the buyer’s forms, so a genuinely unwilling insured stops the transaction regardless of who owns the contract.

How much less does a survivorship policy sell for than a single-life policy?

There is no fixed discount, but survivorship offers are consistently lower for the same face amount because payment waits for the second death and two lives must be underwritten. The spread between competing bids also tends to be wider. That variability is precisely why survivorship cases should be shopped to several licensed providers rather than accepting the first number offered.

Our ILIT no longer serves a purpose. Can we just stop paying premiums?

You can, but lapsing discards whatever value the contract holds, including cash value and any secondary market value. Before stopping payments, ask the carrier for the reduced paid-up and extended term nonforfeiture figures, the current net cash surrender value, and an in-force illustration. Then compare those against a settlement valuation. Trustees should document that comparison for the beneficiaries.

Does selling the policy create a tax bill for the trust?

It can. The general framework compares sale proceeds against the owner’s basis and the policy’s cash surrender value, with the excess over basis potentially split between ordinary income and capital gain. Trust taxation compresses brackets sharply, so the result differs from an individual sale. This is a question for the trust’s own CPA and counsel, not something to estimate from a website.

What documents will a buyer ask for on a trust-owned survivorship case?

Expect the full policy with all riders, a current in-force illustration, the complete trust instrument with amendments, proof of trustee appointment, the trust’s tax identification number, HIPAA authorizations from both insureds, five years of medical records for each, and identification for the trustee. Assembling this before shopping the file removes weeks from the timeline.

Is a survivorship policy inside a family trust considered STOLI?

No, provided it was issued with valid insurable interest and funded by genuine gifts from the insureds. Stranger-originated life insurance describes a policy manufactured at inception for an investor with no insurable interest, which is void in most states. Selling an ordinary family policy years after issue is a different transaction entirely and is expressly permitted by state life settlement statutes.

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