Can You Sell a Silac Survivorship (Second-to-Die) Policy? (2026)

Two Contracts That Sound Alike and Behave Oppositely

Put your contract next to this list and the answer will be obvious within a minute.

A joint and survivor annuity has an accumulation or contract value, a surrender charge schedule that runs a defined number of years, possibly a market value adjustment, and an income or withdrawal benefit rider. Its purpose is to pay income for as long as either annuitant lives, often at a reduced percentage after the first death. Nothing about it depends on both people dying — the opposite. When both annuitants have died, whatever remains passes to a beneficiary.

A second-to-die life insurance policy has a face amount, two named insureds, a single premium schedule, and a death benefit provision that pays after the last surviving insured dies. It is not an income vehicle. Its cash value, if any, is incidental to the death benefit.

The exits are different too. An annuity can be surrendered, subject to remaining surrender charges and any market value adjustment; annuitized into an income stream; exchanged for another annuity under Internal Revenue Code section 1035; or simply held to the beneficiary. It cannot be sold into the life settlement market, because there is no death benefit for a buyer to collect. See life settlement versus annuity and life settlement versus selling an annuity.

SILAC, Equitable Life & Casualty, and Why the Name Confuses People

Corporate history matters here because policyholders frequently hold paperwork under one name and receive statements under another.

SILAC Insurance Company was founded in 1935 as Equitable Life & Casualty Insurance Company and is described as Utah’s oldest active life insurance company, headquartered in Salt Lake City. The company announced its corporate name change to SILAC on August 31, 2020 and completed the transition across its product lines by early 2021. It is not affiliated with the various other companies that have used the word Equitable in their names, and confusing them is a genuine and common error.

The practical consequences:

• Older contracts may say Equitable Life & Casualty while statements now say SILAC. That is a rename, not a transfer to a different insurer, so the obligations under your contract are unchanged.
• The legacy block includes senior health products — Medicare supplement, short-stay nursing home, specified disease — reflecting the company’s original market. Those are health contracts with no death benefit and nothing to sell.
• The regulator has not changed. SILAC is Utah-domiciled and supervised by the Utah Insurance Department, which handles solvency oversight, form approval and consumer complaints. See Utah insurance department consumer help.

If you cannot tell from the paperwork what you own, call the servicing number on your most recent statement and ask the representative to state, in writing, the product type, the contract’s current value, and whether it carries a death benefit.

If It Really Is Second-to-Die Life Insurance

Assume the contract turns out to be joint life insurance issued by some carrier. The valuation logic then applies, and it is unforgiving in a specific way.

A buyer estimates when the death benefit will be collected, estimates the premiums required to reach that date, discounts both at the fund’s required return, and offers a portion of the difference. On a single insured, the timing comes from one independent life expectancy report. On a survivorship contract, two reports are ordered and the buyer models the distribution of the later of two deaths.

The consequences are consistent across every file in this category:

• The healthier insured controls the timeline. A five-year life expectancy paired with a fifteen-year life expectancy prices near fifteen, not near ten.
• Premium is paid the whole distance, so a heavy premium over a long horizon can consume the entire spread.
• Fewer buyers participate. Not every provider maintains a joint mortality model, so price discovery is thinner and first offers deserve more scrutiny.
• Small faces get declined, not lowballed. Two sets of medical records and two life expectancy reports cost the same on a $200,000 policy as on a $2,000,000 one.

The mechanics of the model itself are set out in how life settlement buyers price a policy, and the category overview is can I sell a survivorship life policy.

Contract type	Pays when	Life settlement market?	Real exits
Joint and survivor annuity	Income while either annuitant lives	No	Hold, free withdrawal, surrender, annuitize, 1035 exchange
Multi-year guaranteed annuity	At the end of the guarantee period	No	Hold to maturity, surrender, 1035 exchange
Medicare supplement	Reimburses medical costs	No	Keep, or change plans in an allowed window
Short-stay nursing home or specified disease	On a covered event	No	Keep or drop; check benefit triggers first
Second-to-die life insurance	After both insureds die	Possible above provider minimums	Keep, reduce face, surrender, or test the market

The Circumstance That Changes the Answer

One event transforms a hard-to-sell survivorship policy into an ordinary one: the death of the first insured.

At that point the contract is economically a single-life policy on the survivor. One life expectancy report instead of two. A shorter modeled horizon. A wider pool of interested buyers. Every obstacle described above is removed at once.

What to do, in order:

1. Send the carrier a certified death certificate and request written confirmation of how the contract now operates — in particular whether the premium changes and whether cost of insurance is now assessed on the survivor alone. On some universal-chassis survivorship policies the required premium rises sharply after the first death, which surprises families badly.
2. Request a fresh in-force illustration on the survivor, at current charges and at guaranteed maximum charges, plus a solve for the premium that carries the policy to age 100.
3. Look for a policy split option in the contract. Some forms allow separation into individual policies on defined triggering events, with narrow exercise windows.
4. Reassess the survivor’s health, which is now the entire timing input.
5. Review the beneficiary designation, which may still point to a trust built for a tax problem that no longer exists.

Nothing is payable at the first death on a second-to-die policy. What changes is the character of the asset — and the fact that it changes is the single most under-acted-on piece of information in this category.

Ownership, Signatures, and the Two-Year Rule

Two procedural facts govern whether a transaction is even possible.

Who owns it. Survivorship policies of any size are usually held by an irrevocable life insurance trust. The trustee signs, not the insureds, and the trustee owes duties to the beneficiaries. A careful trustee documents that the instrument grants a power of sale, checks whether beneficiary consent or notice is required, compares a sale against continuing premiums in writing, and preserves the record of offers received so it is clear the market was tested. Where the trust is administered informally — missing Crummey withdrawal notices, an unfunded premium account, a successor trustee who never formally accepted — sort those problems out before a closing calendar starts rather than during due diligence. Practical detail is in selling an ILIT-owned policy. Trust powers vary by instrument and by state, so the trustee’s own counsel is the right reader.

How old the policy is. Individual life contracts allow the insurer to rescind for a material misrepresentation on the application within two years of issue, and a reinstatement following a lapse generally restarts that window. Buyers will not close on an asset the carrier could void, so files inside the window are shelved until it runs. See what is the contestability period.

Both insureds must also sign HIPAA authorizations releasing medical records. If one will not or cannot, the file usually ends there, and a power of attorney may or may not carry authority to sell a life policy depending on the document’s language and state law.

Real Exits, Product by Product

Match your contract to the row that fits and stop pursuing options that do not exist for it.

Fixed indexed annuity (Denali, Teton, Vega style). Options are: hold and let the surrender period run out; take the free withdrawal amount allowed each year, typically a percentage of contract value; surrender and accept the remaining charge and any market value adjustment; annuitize; or exchange under section 1035 into another annuity. There is no settlement market. Watch for advisers pushing an exchange that restarts a long surrender schedule — that is a suitability question your state department cares about.

Multi-year guaranteed annuity (Secure Savings style). Same list, with a shorter horizon. Waiting out the guarantee period is often the cheapest exit.

Medicare supplement or senior health product. No death benefit, nothing to sell. If premium is the problem, the question is whether a different plan or a different carrier is more affordable during a permitted enrollment window.

Genuine second-to-die life insurance. Keep, reduce the face amount, surrender for cash value if any exists, or test the market — realistically only above roughly $250,000 of face with both insureds over 70.

Whatever you hold, be alert to the pitch that does not match the product. Anyone offering to buy an annuity as a life settlement, demanding an advance fee, or pressing for a signature before you have seen written terms is describing something other than a regulated transaction. The patterns are catalogued in life settlement scams and red flags.

Verify Before Anyone Signs

Three verification steps cost nothing and prevent most bad outcomes.

Verify the product. Call the servicing number on your most recent statement — not a number from a search result — and get the product type, current value, surrender charge status and death benefit, if any, confirmed in writing.

Verify the license. Life settlement providers and brokers must be licensed by state insurance departments. Utah’s viatical and life settlement provisions sit in Title 31A, Chapter 36 of the Utah Code, covering licensing, disclosure and rescission rights for transactions involving Utah residents. If you live elsewhere, your own state’s statute governs the transaction even though Utah regulates this insurer. An overview is at life settlement licensing in Utah.

Verify the numbers. Every offer should be in writing, should state the gross offer and every deduction from it including compensation, and should identify the escrow agent. If any of that is missing, you do not have an offer — you have a conversation.

Pine Lake Life Solutions does not purchase policies and is not licensed in every state. What we do is read the contract, tell you which product you actually hold, and lay out the exits that genuinely apply — including the frequent answer that an annuity should simply be held to the end of its surrender schedule, or that a second-to-die policy with both insureds healthy is better kept than sold. That review is free. Send the contract cover page or call (305) 209-7183.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Does SILAC issue survivorship life insurance?

We could not confirm a joint-and-last-survivor life insurance product from SILAC Insurance Company, current or legacy. The Salt Lake City company is annuity-led, with fixed indexed annuities in the Denali, Teton and Vega series and multi-year guaranteed annuities under the Secure Savings names, plus Medicare supplement and other senior health coverage. Check your contract for a face amount and two named insureds.

Is a joint and survivor annuity the same as a second-to-die policy?

No, they are opposites. A joint and survivor annuity pays income while at least one annuitant is alive, often at a reduced percentage after the first death. A second-to-die life policy pays a death benefit only after both insureds have died. Annuities have no death benefit for a settlement buyer to collect, so they cannot be sold into the life settlement market.

My policy says Equitable Life & Casualty. Is that still valid?

Yes. Equitable Life & Casualty Insurance Company, founded in Utah in 1935, changed its corporate name to SILAC Insurance Company effective in 2020, completing the transition across product lines by early 2021. A name change does not alter the obligations under your contract. Note that this company is unrelated to other insurers that have used Equitable in their names.

Can I get out of a SILAC annuity early?

Generally yes, at a cost. Most contracts allow a free withdrawal each year, commonly a percentage of contract value. Beyond that, surrendering triggers the remaining surrender charge and any market value adjustment. A section 1035 exchange moves value to another annuity without current tax, but be cautious about exchanges that restart a long new surrender schedule.

One insured on our second-to-die policy died. What now?

Revalue it immediately as a single-life policy on the survivor. Send the carrier a certified death certificate, ask in writing whether the premium or cost-of-insurance basis changes, request a fresh in-force illustration on the survivor at both current and guaranteed charges, and check the contract for a policy split option. Nothing is payable at the first death, but the options change substantially.

Someone offered to buy my annuity as a life settlement. Is that real?

Treat it as a warning sign. Life settlements involve life insurance death benefits, not annuity contract values, so an offer framed that way suggests either confusion or something worse. Ask for the offer in writing with every deduction itemized, verify the person’s license with your state insurance department, and never pay an advance fee to receive an offer.

Related Reading

• Can I Sell A Survivorship Life Policy
• Life Settlement Vs Annuity
• Life Settlement Vs Selling An Annuity
• Sell Ilit Trust Owned Policy
• What Is The Contestability Period
• How Life Settlement Buyers Price A Policy
• Life Settlement Scams Red Flags
• Life Settlement Licensing Utah
• Utah Insurance Department Consumer Help

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Pine Lake Life Solutions does not purchase life insurance policies and does not provide legal, tax, or investment advice. Information provided is for educational purposes only. Eligibility for any option, including life settlements, is not guaranteed and depends on individual circumstances, policy terms, underwriting, and market conditions. Consult independent legal, tax, or financial professionals before making decisions regarding a life insurance policy.