If you believe that a deceased individual owned life insurance you should first start by attempting to find paperwork from a life insurer. If you are successful in doing this, call the insurer with information including the deceased's date of birth and social security number. If you are not the beneficiary the insurer will not be able to disclose information to you, but you can either have the beneficiary contact the insurer or give the insurer contact information for the beneficiary.
If you are unsuccessful at locating paperwork, you can contact the Medial Information Bureau (MIB) located in Massachusetts and use their policy finder tool. There is a cost for this, and the success rate of finding a policy is admittedly low, but this can sometimes be helpful.
Lastly, you can wait. Insurer's are supposed to report proceeds to the state in which the deceased was a legal resident to the state's department of treasury et. al. and hand funds over to them. This is coordinated through the Social Security Administrations Death Master File database. You can then contact the state's treasury department to inquire about funds being released by an insurer.
In addition to the tips Brandon gave, you can ask around. If the deceased person lived in that area for a while, they may have purchased their life insurance from a local agency, possibly where they hold their home or auto insurance. A relative or friend may have discussed the company through which their policy was purchased. You can look in the places where they kept their important papers. Unfortunately, many people allow their policies to lapse, and that is why their policies cannot be found.
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If you are unsuccessful at locating paperwork, you can contact the Medial Information Bureau (MIB) located in Massachusetts and use their policy finder tool. There is a cost for this, and the success rate of finding a policy is admittedly low, but this can sometimes be helpful.
Lastly, you can wait. Insurer's are supposed to report proceeds to the state in which the deceased was a legal resident to the state's department of treasury et. al. and hand funds over to them. This is coordinated through the Social Security Administrations Death Master File database. You can then contact the state's treasury department to inquire about funds being released by an insurer.