Insurance For Your Worst Fears: Vampire Bites, Ghosts, Aliens, Divorce and More

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Editor’s Note: The following post by Kat Zeman comes from partner site Insure.com.

When there’s a demand for a product – no matter how outlandish – someone will likely supply it. Insurance isn’t much different. We’ve surfed the world in search of insurance products that address our fears, from the everyday speeding ticket to the dreaded vampire bite. Here’s what we found.

This ticket is bogus!

I couldn’t get to work fast enough to tell you about this one: If you’re a U.S. resident and member of the National Motorists Association (NMA), you automatically receive reimbursement for a speeding ticket – sort of like speeding ticket insurance, except it’s not officially insurance.

The association will pay one speeding ticket per year, up to $300. There’s one minor catch: You have to fight the ticket in court. If you are found guilty, the NMA will pay for the ticket. This program was spawned by NMA’s Traffic Justice Program, which tries to discourage cities from unjustly issuing speeding tickets for the sake of revenue. Never mind that drivers may indeed be speeding. “The traffic ticket system is broken and one way to force change is to make it unprofitable for cities to give them out,” states the NMA’s Web site. “The cities are counting on people just paying the money.”

Automobile associations in Europe have similar reimbursement. In Denmark, the Danish Automobile Association reimburses its drivers for speeding and parking fines. For just 2.50 Danish crowns (33 Euro cents) per day, the club will pay up to four speeding tickets and four parking tickets per year, up to a value of 10,000 crowns.

Love to gamble, hate to lose

Maybe you like gambling but not the stomach-churning risk of losing all your money. If you live in the United Kingdom and enjoy online gambling action, casino insurance promises cash back for your losing bets. Offered to players at the online gambling site Devilfish.com (which does not accept wagers from the United States), the insurance is free to all players and doesn’t even require you to sign up. Here’s how it works: A gambler with the Devilfish insurance who loses 50 Euros (roughly $68) in a month will get back five Euros ($6.79). At the maximum, a gambler who loses 1,000 Euros ($1,358) in a month will get back 150 ($203). Not a bad insurance policy considering it’s free.

Those blasted vampires, werewolves and ghosts!

If you’ve got unresolved issues with the supernatural, Lloyd’s of London has a policy for you. Over the years, the insurer has been known to insure some pretty unusual stuff. This includes policies for vampire bites, werewolf attacks and ghosts. In 2002, the Royal Falcon Hotel in Lowestoft, England, insured its staff and customers against death and disability caused by ghosts, poltergeists and other abnormal phenomena. According to BBC News, the hotel paid a 500 pound premium per year ($768) for 1 million pounds (roughly $1.5 million) of coverage. Lloyd’s also claims that it has sold more than 40,000 policies against alien abduction over the years. To make a successful claim, you must pass a lie detector test and supply video of the abduction or a third-party witness.

A case of cold feet

If you’ve got jitters about tying the knot, divorce insurance may help you get to the altar. An American insurance company claims it will be the first “in the world” to offer “real divorce insurance.”

The Safeguard Guaranty Corp., parent company of soon-to-be-launched Divorceinsurance.com, plans to offer divorce insurance to reluctant lovebirds sometime this year.

The idea is simple: You can purchase anywhere from $20,000 to $2 million in coverage to pay for your financial hardship, like legal fees, if your wedded bliss turns into a nightmare. The Americans for Divorce Reform estimates that 40 to 50 percent of marriages will end in divorce. A $20,000 policy will cost you around $30 per month.

I don’t want to be kidnapped in Mexico!

Kidnapping and ransom demands are real concerns for American businesspeople in certain countries, including Mexico, Brazil and India. But smart employers that have to send their workers to these parts buy kidnap & ransom insurance to protect themselves against the possibility. The insurance companies often offer training and security to prevent kidnappings, and skilled negotiators and ransom payments when things go wrong.

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