Why Do Life Insurance Policyholders Lapse? 
That is a great question ! There are a couple of common reasons I 've found for why most policies lapse . The most common is that people no longer can afford the policy , and so just stop paying it . This is unfortunate , as often they leave cash in the policy that could have been theirs . Another common reason is that the person who had been paying the premium passes , and no one knew the payments were n't being made . I 've seen this far too many times when a parent or spouse has passed , and the insured receives a notice of cancellation . The last is poor record keeping . People switch bank accounts , and forget to notify the insurance company , which tries to draw payment off the closed account , and the policy lapses . I hope that helps , thanks for asking ! 