Death benefit
As a burial fund ( Grabe- or corpse Checkout , dead load , mortality charge , funeral Checkout ) refers to small, mainly to cover the funeral expenses bezweckende, some with health insurance linked life insurer , in the event of death , the death benefit to the heirs pay or procurer of burial or, if there are not any, arrange the funeral yourself.
historical development
There were death benefit insurances and institutions specializing in such facilities as early as ancient times in the Roman Empire .
In Germany in the 18th and 19th centuries, members of guilds, journeyman's associations, other professional organizations and poorer urban neighborhoods came together to form Totenladen. The stores, which also existed in material form as boxes, which gave these solidarity associations their name, contained not only the cash but also the collection box (s), the white and black sheets required for laying out, and in wealthier corporations also the silver coffin shields that were used to decorate the coffin. A north German peculiarity is likely to be the so-called Bricken, round tokens made of wood or made of pewter, with which a messenger was sent around to ask certain members to be ready as pallbearers by carrying these symbols. Attending the funeral was a duty of honor for all members, as the rank of the deceased was measured not least by the length of the funeral procession.
In the first half of the 20th century in particular, many death benefit funds emerged as self-help institutions in companies or in limited local areas.
Legal assessment
At the funeral insurance is usually a lifelong life insurance in case of death, which is different from other life insurance only by the particularly low, in the amount legally limited sum insured. However, other statutory provisions also apply to death benefit funds and the insurance contracts offered by them. Death benefit funds are not subject to the European regulations for the free internal market for insurance. In Germany they are usually smaller mutual insurance associations, a special form of mutual insurance association . According to German law, the basis for this classification is the restriction to a factually, locally or personally limited sphere of activity ( Section 210 Insurance Supervision Act VAG). This applies to death benefit funds, as they usually only offer death benefit insurance and are often limited to a certain group of people or a certain region. However, there are also numerous very small death benefit funds in the form of a registered association .
Death benefit funds are subject to German insurance supervision. For most death benefit funds, this is the respective state supervisory authority. In January 2017, only 35 death benefit funds were subject to federal supervision by the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) in Bonn due to their size or their area of activity .
The interests of the German death benefit funds are represented by the German Death Fund Association based in Bochum.
Examples
literature
- Hattendorf: About death benefit funds . Goettingen 1867
- Heym: The grave coffers . Leipzig 1850
- Fleischhauer: The death fund associations . Weimar 1882
Web links
- Search for death benefit in the SPK digital portal of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation
- Krünitz, Oekonomische Encyklopädie, Volume 173, Berlin 1840, pp. 142–146 (article death cash )
- What is a death benefit?
- German Death Fund Association
Individual evidence
- ^ Description of the object in the digital museum portal Rhineland-Palatinate
- ^ Certificate of approval from the Reich Supervisory Office for Private Insurance IVSt (B) 3413/1.
- ↑ Examples for all mentioned object types, including in the collection of the Focke Museum Bremen
- ↑ Query by category of death benefit funds in BaFin's corporate database