Death becomes you, or will, anyway, if you ever bother to get around to dying

Interesting article in the Wall Street Journal the other day on investors who've bought the rights to the life insurance policies of others - in hopes that The Last Rites will be performed sooner rather than later.

In Catholic Church parlance, the communion given to the dying as part of those Last Rites is called viaticum, and, nice and companionably, the practice of selling your life insurance policy is called a viatical. In both cases, it's all about provisions for the journey. (Gosh, Sister Daniel Vincent and Sister Theresa Bernard were right. Latin does come in handy.) And, of course, as we generally accept as true  - for anyone who's neither a pharaoh nor a "cryonics patient" suspended head-down like a human Freeze Pop hoping that, in another few years, someone will figure out how to undead and rejuvenate them - you can't take it with you.

So, if you're on life's final journey - and who isn't? - and if it no longer seems that important that your kids get the $1M insurance policy you took out when they were toddlers, why not get some cash out now, when you can still put your dancing shoes on?

Thus cometh the viatical business, which:

... began during the AIDS epidemic, when the disease was usually fatal. Medical advances hurt the business back then, so it changed its focus to the elderly in which those who want the cash can sell their policy to those looking for a sure-fire investment.

Oh those wicked, hurtful medical advances that are letting those AIDS patients live.

But old people, now there's a market. Old people, like, die. So you can buy the policy (or a piece of it); granny gets the money; you keep paying the premiums; and you wait.

Which is fine. After all, what is life but one big waiting room in which there's only one door on the other end to go through - a door that we know not where it leads. We only know that no body - with a couple of possible religious-based exceptions - returns.

So, waiting for someone to die is something of an investment-strategy no-brainer.

But the problem is that you may have to wait wait. And wait. And wait.

Because actuarial tables don't mean that any particular granny is going to check out at age 81 years, 6 months, and 4 days. They just mean that most grannies will.  Just maybe not yours. Who, of course, is not your literal granny, but the granny who's policy you own. Which means you get to comb the obits and be happy to learn that Mildred Muletrain has gone on to her reward, and you can get yours. Yippee. Rather than be saddened that, while Granny Muletrain had a good run, you will miss receiving a hand-tatted doily every Christmas. Of course, I don't imagine that in real life (or death) you actually get to know the name of your viatical granny. It might be way too morally hazardous to the average investor if they could find out where Mildred Muletrain lives, and maybe - wink, wink, nudge, nudge - help her across the street. Oops.

Anyway, the long and indeterminate wait for the original policy holder to die is one of the soft spots in the viatical biz. Another is its association with fraudsters: viaticals rank in the top-ten of investment scams.

Many viatical (or life settlements) firms are on the up and up, including the charmingly named Life Partners Holdings. Sounds more like a dating service, no? Or relationship counseling. Which is what you get if you think that the url for Life Partners Holdings might be www.lifepartners.com.

Life Partners Holdings, however, is not without its own touchy-feely attributes. One of its community endeavors is helping out with an animal shelter. Nothing remarkable there. But another part of their community engagement is a little higher up on the odd-ball scale.

Life Partners, Inc. is proud to serve the community by offering free tours of the exquisite museum-quality Ice Age display at their local headquarters. Purchase of these artifacts has helped in funding the John Wood Ministry in Russia and also provided funds for future paleontological excavations. Children of all ages are encouraged to make a reservation today to see many fascinating items, including the 50,000 year old mammoth skull, skeletons of a woolly bison and rhinoceros, and the prized, full-size replica of a female woolly mammoth.

If I'm ever in Waco, Texas - which I fervently hope not to be - I (as a child of all ages) would definitely call for a reservation. Wooly bully, indeed.

Meanwhile, investors like the 52 year old woman mentioned in the WSJ article sits around tapping their feet - and shelling out more money to pay for what are now pretty costly premiums - waiting for the 89 year old policy holder to go the way of the wooly mammoth.

So viatical investing is not quite the no-brainer that one might imagine.

As the WSJ article warns:

Only people with ample financial assets should venture here. Much as with hedge funds, a Life Partners investor must have an annual income of at least $200,000 ($300,000 for a couple) and a net worth of $1 million or more.

"This is not a place for amateurs," says Doug Head, executive director of the Orlando, Fla.-based Life Insurance Settlement Association. "It's a high-risk investment that requires considerable sophistication."

It viaticals are no place for amateurs, we amateurs can take comfort in knowing that, amateur and professional alike, jaded sophisticate and naif, Hattie telling Matty or Matty telling Hattie, we may bet that we're going to live, but the really smart money says that, sooner or later, we're not.

And whether you're a viatical investor or the viaticalite yourself, for the most part, man (and woman) knoweth not their time.