The financial needs of family survivors do not terminate at the closing of the deceased�s estate. Minor children and other dependents may need support for a lifetime or at least for many years until they become self-supporting. Life insurance and other accumulated assets can provide that necessary financial support. With proper planning, a surviving spouse should be supported during this dependency period as well, rather than being forced to enter the labor market. In some cases whether or not the spouse works is not a discretionary planning option because the spouse may be disabled or may otherwise be unable to enter the work force. In fact, there is a possibility (although it is relatively infrequent) that the surviving spouse could have become disabled at the time the insured spouse died.

When planning the income needs of family survivors it is important to include all persons who depend on the income of the person to be insured. Such planning is important for each member providing income to the family unit. This often includes both husband and wife, and it could include children living at home who contribute income to support the family.

In today�s world of frequent marriages and divorces it is common to have more than one group of minor children to be supported. The husband and wife may have children from previous marriages in addition to the children of the current marriage. This situation could involve the finances of three or more separate households, or all the children could live together with the husband and wife. The other sources of support available to children of previous marriages obviously affect the children�s financial needs. The income needs of the youngest children�usually the children of the current marriage and those with the longest period of dependency�should usually be given top priority.

Other children who may need lifelong financial support are children with physical disabilities or mental impairments that will prevent them from ever becoming self-supporting. Their dependency can continue many years beyond the death of both parents. Planning for the financial support of these children can be very complex. Severely handicapped children may require institutional care, which can be extremely expensive in private facilities and is available through public institutions only if the family withdraws financial support so the child can qualify for welfare programs. Any asset or trust established for these children�s support must be very carefully structured. The rendering of public institutional support often gives the government the right to take possession of assets that are for the benefit of the child receiving the institutional care. In some cases the government has even been able to invade trusts.

Parents caring for permanently dependent children have to consider the long-term need for finances to support themselves and the impaired child. Some degenerative diseases shorten life expectancy predictably, and parents can plan for their financial dependents with the knowledge that their impaired child is less likely to survive them. But other permanently dependent children have normal or unknown life expectancies. Planning for such a child�s support may have to extend beyond the parents� lives.

Another group of family dependents who may have a relatively short and predictable period of dependency are the husband�s and wife�s parents. The financial demands of providing parental support can be minimal�providing room and board in the home for example. At the other end of the spectrum, support of a parent in an institution can be very expensive. Care for an elderly parent in an upscale institution often costs more than two times the median family income.

The voluntary assumption of financial support for another individual often implies a willingness to provide that support as long as it is needed. That need may extend beyond the death of the supporter. Careful planning and adequate amounts of life insurance can assure extended parental support even if the supporting child predeceases that parent. Otherwise the supporting child�s death may force the parent to drastically change living arrangements and lower his or her standard of life.

Financial dependence is not restricted to children, spouses, and parents. In some cases distant relatives and current or ex-in-laws may have to be supported for one reason or another. For example, some families assume the responsibility for refugees from war-torn or storm-ravaged areas. Some take in foster children and develop emotional bonds that are as strong as those between natural parents and children. Many of these foster parents extend financial support above and beyond that required by the foster parent program.

Another potential group of financial dependents is illegitimate children. Sometimes the parents assume financial responsibility voluntarily; in other cases there are court-imposed obligations to provide support. These types of dependencies are much less frequent than court-ordered support of legitimate children stemming from divorce suits, but in either case the legal requirements for parental support of minor children are geared to mere sustenance. Most parents strive to provide much more to dependent minor children than they are obligated to give under the law. With careful planning and financing, this parental largesse can be continued after the parent�s death.

Many people make a regular discretionary payment to their adult children to enhance their standard of living although there is clearly no parental obligation to make these gifts, and the children are not dependent on the payments for necessities. Nevertheless, many parents in these circumstances have a strong desire to continue such enhancement payments at least until the grandchildren become self-supporting, even if the period of payments extends beyond the grandparent�s life.

Payments to enhance someone�s lifestyle, however, are not necessarily restricted to children or other family members. Payments are sometimes extended to lifelong domestic helpers and care givers as an informal pension, perhaps for the recipient�s remaining lifetime. Life insurance can fund these payments if the benefactor dies first.

Any sort of plan to provide ongoing income payments to dependents or others after death requires the provider to make decisions about the amount of the payments and their duration. A starting point is to decide whether the income payments constitute partial support, full support, or full support plus an enhancement element. Another factor to consider is whether the payments are intended to be level or to change over time. In some cases there may be an intent to phase out these income payments by decreasing them over a given interval in the expectation that the recipient will achieve financial independence. Conversely, when the intent is to provide full support, income payments may have to be increased to compensate for the effects of inflation.

The duration of support payments can vary widely, depending on the provider�s objectives. Payments may go to a very specific and predictable date, such as age 21 of the grandchild, age 35 of a child, age 90 of a spouse or other dependent, or to a specified calendar year. Alternatively, payments may be designed to continue for an unknown length of time, such as the remaining lifetime of the recipient, until the recipient remarries, or until the birth of a child. Income payments can even be designed to be perpetual so that the capital sum supporting the income payments is not reduced or depleted. By using a perpetual-funding approach for lifetime incomes, the capital sum is a transferrable asset after the income objectives are satisfied. A common application is the qualified terminal interests property trust (QTIP) used for estate planning purposes. In such a trust a lifetime income is paid to the surviving spouse, and the trust corpus is then distributed to children (or others) after the spouse dies.