Most people take out life cover once, sign the forms and never look at it again. The policy sits in a drawer doing its quiet job while everything around it changes: the mortgage shrinks, the children grow up and move out, a second income arrives or disappears. What was the right cover on the day you signed is sometimes not the right cover a decade onwards. As the adage goes, it’s always better to hope for the best but plan for the worst, and nowhere is that more true than with your life insurance policy. While no one likes to think about the unexpected, having the right protection in place can provide peace of mind for both you and the people who depend on you.

That gap between what you arranged years ago and what your household actually needs now is the thing worth paying attention to. Reviewing your life insurance every so often is less about buying more and more about checking that what you have still matches your circumstances and strategy for the future. The right amount in your thirties is seldom the right amount in your fifties. In the early years, the need is usually at its sharpest. A young family in Clonakilty or Bandon with a fresh mortgage and small children depends heavily on both parents' incomes, and a policy taken out before the children arrived may no longer stretch far enough. This is also when many people sign the mortgage protection their lender puts in front of them at the closing, without realising it is rarely the cheapest cover available and almost never the only option. The CCPC, the State's consumer watchdog, notes that the lowest premium is not always the best value, and that shopping around at this stage is worth the effort.

By the forties, the picture shifts. The mortgage is smaller, so the cover needed to clear it falls too, while other things change in the opposite direction. Health is the one people forget: a premium set when you smoked can stay set that way for years after you have quit, simply because nobody went back to ask. Families also grow more complicated, with ageing parents, teenagers heading for college, and a partner whose own cover may be out of step. Where one partner is heavily insured and the other barely at all, the household is exposed in a way the paperwork hides.

Later still, the reasons change again. With the mortgage gone and the children independent, some people assume cover is no longer needed at all. Others find new reasons for it. Inheritance tax can leave children with a bill they had not planned for, and certain policies exist specifically to cover that. The future care of a spouse can also be built in. Citizens Information sets out the main types of cover plainly, which is a sensible starting point before any conversation with an adviser. None of this means rushing to change anything. It means knowing what you hold and why. The same instinct that sends people to the paper's own know your rights column applies here: understanding where you stand before you act usually saves both money and worry. The trouble only ever shows up at claim time, and by then it is the family, not the policyholder, dealing with it.

The point is not that everyone is under-insured or over-insured. It is that almost nobody is insured for the life they are living now rather than the one they had when they signed. A short review every few years, or after any large change at home, keeps the cover in step. Whatever happens, the people you arranged it for are the ones who feel the difference.