Mississippi Life Study Guide

Mississippi life law is organised around an absence: there is no standard-provisions statute for individual life insurance here. The provisions you memorised nationally arrive through form-filing review instead. Learn which are statutory and which are checklist, and the traps in this part stop working.

The statute that isn’t there

Title 83, Chapter 7, Article 1 runs from Miss. Code Ann. §83-7-1 to §83-7-51 — the whole of Mississippi’s individual life article. Read it end to end and you will not find a grace-period statute, an incontestability statute, a reinstatement statute or a suicide statute. Not shortened versions — absent.

Form filing fills the gap. MID’s “Submission Requirements for Life Insurance Policies” tells a company what a policy must say before approval: “There must be a grace period of not less than 30 days.” “There must be an incontestability period of not more than 24 months.” “There must be a reinstatement after a premium default provision” — with no window set, so the familiar three years is product norm, not Mississippi rule.

Then the one that decides items: Mississippi prescribes no suicide-clause period. No statute, no Title 19 rule, nothing on the checklist. A question asking for “Mississippi’s suicide period” has a false premise.

Misstatement of age, by contrast, is statutory. §83-7-15 reaches any “policy, certificate, or contract of life insurance in any form”: the misstatement “shall not invalidate said policy,” and the beneficiaries recover the amount “the premiums paid would have purchased for the insured at his actual age.” Adjust, never void. The checklist adds an edge: “Misstatement of nonsmoking or smoking status is not allowed.”

Ten days, and only on life

The free look is statutory. Miss. Code Ann. §83-7-51 requires every individual life policy or contract issued for delivery in Mississippi on or after July 1, 1989 to carry a notice that the purchaser “shall be permitted to return the policy or contract within ten (10) days of its delivery … and to have the premium paid refunded.”

It reaches an “individual life insurance policy or contract” and nothing else. A standalone, non-replacement individual deferred annuity has no free look in Mississippi at all — the suitability regulation, 19 Miss. Admin. Code Pt. 2, Ch. 18, creates no right to return either. A replacement is the exception: 30 days, under 19 Miss. Admin. Code Pt. 2, R. 14.05(A)(4).

Nonforfeiture — two sixty-day clocks, not a menu of three

Read Miss. Code Ann. §83-7-25 before you answer anything about it, because it does not enumerate three options. §83-7-25(2)(a) requires that on proper request made “not later than sixty (60) days after the due date of the premium in default” the company grant “a paid-up nonforfeiture benefit on a plan stipulated in the policy.” §83-7-25(2)(b) requires “a cash surrender value” on surrender “within sixty (60) days after the due date of any premium payment in default” — but only “after premiums have been paid for at least three (3) full years in the case of ordinary insurance or five (5) full years in the case of industrial insurance.” The twin sixty-day windows are the famous part; that eligibility condition on (b) is the part items are built on.

Reduced paid-up and extended term are the forms insurers conventionally stipulate to satisfy (a) — industry practice satisfying the statute, not a statutory three-item menu.

Loans and rebates

Policy loan interest at Miss. Code Ann. §83-7-26 is an election, not a rate: a fixed maximum of “not more than eight percent (8%) per annum,” or an adjustable rate at the higher of the rate used to compute cash surrender values plus 1% or Moody’s Corporate Bond Yield Average–Monthly Average Corporates. Review runs at least annually and not more than quarterly; an increase is permitted only on a change of at least half a percent; a reduction is mandatory on a decrease of that size. Permissive up, mandatory down.

Rebating in life has its own home. §83-7-3 is life-specific, sits apart from the unfair trade practices statute, and is not cross-referenced by §83-5-35. It bars discrimination “in favor of individuals of the same class and equal expectation of life” in premiums or rates charged, and bars allowing “as inducements to insurance any rebate of premium payable on the policy, or any special favor or advantage in the dividends or other benefits.” Penalty: on a finding after hearing the commissioner “shall revoke the license” — revocation is mandatory and open-ended — and “no other license shall be issued … within one (1) year after such revocation.” The year is a floor on getting relicensed, not a ceiling on the revocation. Narrow exception: industrial life on a weekly payment plan may return a percentage of premiums after one year of payments.

The secondary market, and two credentials that are not exams

Viatical settlements run from Miss. Code Ann. §83-7-201 to §83-7-223, and the number is in §83-7-217: the viator gets “an unconditional right to rescind the contract for at least fifteen (15) calendar days from the receipt of the viatical settlement proceeds.” Both qualifiers matter — “at least” makes fifteen a floor, and the days are calendar. Death inside the period deems the contract rescinded, subject to repayment of all proceeds. It also requires a physician statement of mental capacity, witnessed consent, escrow with an independent trustee in an FDIC-insured account, and health-status contact with the insured no oftener than quarterly — monthly where life expectancy is under a year.

Two authorities you might expect to be exams are not. Variable products are a separate line at §83-17-63(1)(e) with no Mississippi examination: file a FINRA Series 6 or 7 result, MID verifies it on the FINRA register and amends the licence for $25. Annuity suitability sits in 19 Miss. Admin. Code Pt. 2, Ch. 18: Rule 18.06(A)(1) makes you act “in the best interest of the consumer … without placing the producer’s or the insurer’s financial interest ahead of the consumer’s interest,” and Rule 18.07(B)(1) requires a one-time four (4) credit approved course. Rule 18.11 is effective January 1, 2022 and applies to acts “committed on or after July 1, 2022.” Read the transition rule carefully: a producer who held a life authority on 1 January 2022 owed the full four credits within six months, by 30 June 2022 (R. 18.07(B)(1)(b)). The one-time one-credit update at R. 18.07(B)(6) has a different trigger — it is available only to a producer who had already completed a Department-approved annuity course before that date.