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France has ordered life insurers to pay out to the beneficiaries of people who die through assisted suicide or euthanasia, prompting concerns that relatives could acquire a financial interest in someone choosing to end their life.
The provision forms part of France’s newly approved assisted suicide law and means insurers will not be permitted to rely on ordinary suicide exclusion clauses to deny payments following a legally authorised assisted death.
Significantly, the rule will also apply to life insurance policies taken out before the assisted suicide legislation came into force.
The issue was contested during the legislation’s passage through Parliament. An attempt in the French Senate to allow ordinary insurance exclusions for suicide to apply to assisted deaths was rejected.
Opponents warned that guaranteeing payouts could create an “economic incentive to resort to assisted dying,” particularly where an elderly or vulnerable person knows that their death would provide money to children or other relatives.
The French State Council argued, however, that the measure was necessary to ensure that choosing an assisted death would have no adverse financial consequences for the beneficiaries of a patient’s insurance policy.
The development creates another potential area of concern surrounding the financial pressures that could accompany legalised assisted suicide. While the law requires a decision to die to be “free and informed,” it is clear that subtle pressures cannot always be identified, particularly where inheritance, insurance, care costs, or feelings of being a financial burden are involved.
French legislators had initially created a specific criminal offence of pressuring someone into assisted suicide, carrying a maximum penalty of one year in prison and a €15,000 fine. However, the provision was ultimately removed on the grounds that existing criminal legislation already covered such behaviour.
France’s new law technically permits assisted suicide for adults with a serious and incurable illness that is life-threatening at an advanced or terminal stage. Applicants must also claim physical or psychological suffering that cannot be treated or which they consider unbearable.
The legislation also permits euthanasia where an eligible person is incapable of administering the lethal substance themselves.
The National Assembly approved the legislation on 15th July, despite opposition from the conservative-dominated Senate. France’s Constitutional Council subsequently cleared the law, and President Emmanuel Macron promulgated it this week.
The Catholic Church remains strongly opposed. Archbishop of Paris Laurent Ulrich urged people to make the “courageous” decision not to make use of the new law.
“Euthanasia and assisted suicide now exist as a possibility,” he said. “Nothing should force us to make them a reality in our lives.”
Assisted deaths are not expected to begin immediately. Medical protocols and implementing decrees must first be established, with the first deaths under the new system expected in 2027.
SPUC Executive Director, Michael Robinson, has warned of the dangers of such proposals: “SPUC has been fighting the assisted suicide Bills in Holyrood and Westminster and are greatly dismayed to see the Westminster Bill resurrected. It is a dangerous and rushed law that would put vulnerable people in danger of the most serious acts of coercion. Financial coercion is real. That was seen when the Bill’s previous House of Lords sponsor, Lord Falconer, admitted that poverty is a justifiable reason to choose to die. What we have seen coming out of France shows another way in which that financial coercion can manifest: a big payout.
“This law will change the way the French nation sees the value of life, and it will be exploited by those who put financial gain before the love of family. SPUC will continue fighting to kill a similar, and unamended, piece of legislation in England & Wales on 11th September.”
