What Is A Joint Life Insurance Policy? 
The marital deduction act was the basis for creating joint life insurance or survivorship insurance . The marital deduction act allowed married couples to pass assets between them at the death of the first spouse . Survivorship was created to pay the federal estate tax at the second death of a married couple , coinciding with the marital deduction act . Survivorship policies have several actuarial formats like participating whole life , variable universal life , indexed universal life , current assumptions universal life . 