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Travel Insurance question for traveling with adult children

Hi everyone,
I’m getting ready to purchase trip insurance for an upcoming trip with my two adult kids. They are over 26 yrs old, and each lives in a different state than us. I purchased their airfare and my own and they have reimbursed me. We will do the same for accommodations, prepaid tours, plays, etc. (My pay in full account for them is no longer in service :) )

My questions are

  1. I assume I tally up the pre purchased items as a total, including airfare, hotels, cottage, tickets. Then I buy my own policy. If something were to happen to any of us in our traveling party that would cause the trip to be interrupted or canceled, ( not just the policy holder, but anyone traveling together) I would send in a claim and what I paid would be eligible for a refund? Is this correct?

  2. Should each of them buy their own policy, given the payments that would be made are going to be in my name? I assume it would be wise to do for medical emergency situations, but in terms of recouping any money, it would go back to me reimbursing them equally if something were to happen after I filed a claim getting the money I paid in back. Is that correct? In other words, their intent for coverage is not necessarily to recover any major losses for bookings, etc.

If anyone has any insight or advice on this I would appreciate it. I have bought travel insurance before and thankfully have not needed to use it, but they are both wondering whether they should start now, too.

Thank you all so much!

Posted by
1737 posts

When I purchase travel insurance when I am traveling with my family, I always get asked how many people and their ages.

Posted by
1784 posts

I don't know the actual answer, and only the travel insurance company could tell you...but, if they bought their own travel/trip insurance policy, but they didn't actually buy the trip directly, then they have no proof of purchase to submit a claim. So how does that work?

Now with travel medical insurance, they definitely need to buy their own. Plans are different and based on where you live.

We use GeoBlue for medical and our young adults do as well. We just heard that GeoBlue is now BCBS Global Solutions. Allianz is another one that has been suggested, but we have no experience. We had to submit a claim with GeoBlue after our trip to France. It was submitted online and we were refunded quickly.

The "pay in full" account policy you mention seemed to get stretched well into adulthood based on personal experience! It definitely takes a while to cancel that service (:

Posted by
938 posts

Mary, yes, that is what happens when I have purchased online as well. Having read the plans, it seems that if the travelers in your party are under a certain age, the policy allows for protections for them, but once they are over that age, they would need their own policy to take advantage of those protections.

KD, that’s what I thought as well. Other than them showing their bank statement issuing me a third of the cost of say accommodations, they would have no proof of purchase/ payment to a company. I tried calling Allianz and after many minutes I can never get back with “Jeremy your AI assistant” who tried valiantly to interpret my questions, ugh, I was told we each needed a policy.

I wonder what would be the best one for them to get solely in case of a medical emergency. I will check into GeoBlue/ BCBS that you mentioned.

Posted by
6608 posts

wonder what would be the best one for them to get solely in case of a medical emergency. I will check into GeoBlue/ BCBS that you mentioned.

I would have your kids check their current health insurance plans to see if it covers anything overseas. For example, my employer provided plan covers emergencies and urgent care worldwide (although out-of-network). Because of that, I buy a medical evacuation policy (through Medjet) to supplement.

Posted by
2517 posts

My research shows that Family members and/or travel companions are not covered unless they’re named in your plan documents. I would check with the Plan, especially since you are all adults.

Posted by
938 posts

Good advice Laura, I forgot about that. We checked into this before and their health insurance plans at the time would cover international care and I think it was out of network, at least for a couple of us. I’ll get them to see if theirs remains the same. My insurance will be changing to Medicare before we go, however. The supplement that I will be probably be going with will be pay the first $250 and 20% with a 50k lifetime benefit.

I’m looking into Allianz policies now for me and will talk to them about MedJet.

Posted by
245 posts

When I took my family (adult children and their minor children) on a trip last year, I asked this question to my carrier Travel Insured International.

The answer from them was only members of the household were included on my policy.

So I purchased the policies for the adult children's families.

I suggest trying again to get through to the company you are working with to get the appropriate information for its policies, as it might be different than other companies.