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Rich O’Connell has helped many clients over the years, but nothing could have prepared him for this call.

By Helen Thompson

Rich did more than just deliver the check. He counseled Justina on how to manage the money.

Richard O’Connell, CRPC, of Compass Financial Services in Ellsworth, Wis., had met Justina through her family, who, like him, had a vacation spot in Balsam Lake, about 30 miles north. One day, he invited Justina and her husband, Kevin, over to look at their insurance needs.

As he talked to them, he realized that Justina might be the perfect candidate for a part-time assistant position he’d been toying with creating. She had a very inquisitive nature, asking questions about how the insurance would work, and absorbed much of the information quickly. So, shortly after Rich wrote their life insurance policy, Justina joined the company. After four years, Justina had become an important part of Rich’s business.

The worst kind of call
One Monday morning in October 2005, he came into his office around 8 a.m. It seemed like an ordinary morning, Rich recalls, but then the phone rang. It was Justina’s mother-in-law—Kevin’s mother—calling to say that the couple had been in an accident over the weekend and been taken to different hospitals. Kevin wasn’t doing well, she said, but they hoped to save him, and Justina was badly injured but was going to be OK.

It turned out that they had been heading up to the lake on one of the two-lane highways that led to the village, when an oncoming car pulled into their lane to pass a vehicle and slammed into their car on the driver’s side front corner. “They were both badly injured,” Rich says. “Justina was out of work for several months, and Kevin lived for about 10 days before succumbing to his injuries.”

Their family was well known in the area, and an outpouring of support helped soften the blow. But Justina was now trying to raise their two daughters on her own through her recovery and on a part-time salary. As soon as he heard about the accident, Rich had called the Hartford—his primary company—to alert them there might be a claim—hoping it wouldn’t be the case. But as a result, he was able to get the claim processed more quickly.

Justina’s curiosity about the profession from the outset actually helped her cope. “The first thing I told her was that she was going to be OK,” says Rich. “We had worked on cases with other folks, although she had never experienced a death claim. We’d gone through the scenarios of how it would work, and so she knew, on paper, where all those assets would come from. And, about two weeks later, the proceeds from the life insurance were deposited directly into her bank account, and again, we had gone through all the scenarios of how to handle those funds.”

Strategies for life
Rich did more than just deliver the check. He counseled Justina on how to manage the money, giving her the choice of paying the mortgage off or saving the death benefit to make the mortgage payments, so that she could continue to enjoy the tax benefits of paying mortgage interest.

She chose the latter. “She’s earning enough off the death benefit to pay the mortgage, and it’s still growing a little bit,” says Rich. “It’s working out well, and she has these assets behind her if anything else should happen.” Those savings have also given her a cushion for legal fees while waiting for a claim against the other driver in the accident, and another portion has been set aside for the now-teenage daughters’ college fund.

Justina also used proceeds from another life insurance policy (Kevin’s group life policy from work) to pay off the family’s credit card debt and get herself a reliable, safe car. “She ended up debt-free aside from the mortgage,” he says. “She’s continuing to work part-time for me, which allows her to be at home with her daughters after school, and she’s doing quite well.”

That long-term relationship, both before and after the accident, has made this claim very special to Rich. He’s still surprised at how much she trusted him with her future. But the experience has brought him, as he says, a renewed passion for his career. “It took months to see that smile back on Justina’s face in the office,” he says. “But when it came back, I will never forget it; it was like the golden sunrise on a summer Sunday morning. I now understand more of what I do every day. I help bring the smile and happiness back in a person’s life, when life seems like nothing but despair.”

 

 

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