I feel like the poster child for this question with my father recently passing away at age 84 with 5 small, obscure, life insurance policies for which my mom just got paid. One was taken out when he was 16 years old from a company that we never heard of. I entered the name of the original company in a search engine and quickly found the name of the company now in charge of the policy. Our funeral director tracked it down. If you have the name of the company, you will find the money.
If you do not have the policy number or do not know whether the deceased person even had life insurance, you can start by digging in their records and talking to relatives to see if the deceased person mentioned any to them. I have had calls from people who found my email on their relatives' computers, asking if their loved ones had responded to the quotes I had given them.
If all fails, life insurance that goes unclaimed can end up in the files of the state where it was purchased, after a few years. Check out this website for more information: http://www.unclaimed.org/
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If you do not have the policy number or do not know whether the deceased person even had life insurance, you can start by digging in their records and talking to relatives to see if the deceased person mentioned any to them. I have had calls from people who found my email on their relatives' computers, asking if their loved ones had responded to the quotes I had given them.
If all fails, life insurance that goes unclaimed can end up in the files of the state where it was purchased, after a few years. Check out this website for more information: http://www.unclaimed.org/