Legal & General Critical Illness Cover www.legalandgeneral.com

My wife and I had taken separate policies from Legal and General for critical illness cover, which included children. Our son was subsequently diagnosed with a genetic condition, Spinal Muscular Atrophy, and our financial adviser thought we may be able to claim off both policies, a total of £30,000. However, we were told that as this was a pre-existing familial condition it was not covered. This was despite the fact that nobody in the history of either family had the condition, and there was no way of knowing about it before our son was born. Needless to say I was disgusted as the money would have helped to buy much needed equipment for our son. I would have thought that a pre-existing condition would only count against you if you had been aware of another family member suffering from it. I certainly wouldn't recommend Legal and General to anyone, and I'm not convinced that critical illness is actually worth it. I think it's an insurance industry wheeze to get more money from us.

I took out Legal and General Critical Illness Cover with my mortgage as many people do, to protect me should anything bad happen, as it happens, it did, I was diagnosed with Cancer. When I went to make a claim I was informed firstly that there was no policy in place, this was the start of a number of problems. I have received a welcome pack from Legal and General and payments were being taken, why would I assume I had no policy!Anyway, after going to the FOS, and finding out how useless they were I had to instruct a solicitor to look in to it. When Legal and General had a look in to it they then decided that I had in fact signed the documents for cover when I knew I had a doctors appointment the next day. Their argument for not paying out is that the doctors appointment led to the diagnosis of cancer, if they had know about the appointment they would not have signed anything until after. The trip to the doctors was in fact a check up and not related to the cancer in anyway. Either way I was misdiagnosed for two years (but that's another story) and this claim was 9 months after the policy was put in place. As with most insurance companies they look for ways not to pay out, but to do it so blatantly and in such serious circumstances is appalling, I will never use these insurers again! I was diagnosed in at the start of 2006 and in the summer of 2007 i was told that if I want to fight this i would risk losing thousands. I would be easy for a company of this size to beat little of me. In the end i have had to let them win, there is nothing, I can do. I have more important things to do at the moment, like beating cancer rather than Legal and General. Tread carefully with Insurance companies and policies, I'm sure most are fine and pay out no problem but this is my experience with one of the biggest providers in the country,