The heartbreaking reason why a mother canceled her life insurance months before a terminal diagnosis

A young family wonders if they will have enough money for food and rent after their mother died of cancer last month, with the woman canceling her life insurance just before her terminal diagnosis due to the increase in the cost of living.

Victorian mother-of-four Teressa Gates had been paying for life insurance for “over a decade” when she admitted to her brother Jordan that the increasingly high bills were becoming too difficult to pay.

“She had a few discussions with me and our mom and she just mentioned that everything was getting ridiculous, the prices of everything were going up… it was hard as a single parent,” Jordan told Yahoo News.

“Inflation and the cost of living were rising, as they always are, and she was relatively healthy for most of her life. She never really had any major health problems or anything whatever… so she didn’t have a problem I saw the benefit of life insurance, she couldn’t afford it,” he said.

However, less than four months after canceling her insurance, Teressa, 46, was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer.

Mother ‘terrified’ of financial impact on her children after death

Despite not having much money, Teressa worked tirelessly to provide for her four children, aged 12 to 25, before she died. She had $800 up front to pay their electric and Wi-Fi bills and was able to get terminal funeral coverage so the family would have money for her funeral.

“She was absolutely terrified for her children and didn’t know how she was going to make this work. She did an incredible job. She did an incredible job,” Jordan said.

Her second eldest, Jade, who turned 21 a few days after Teressa’s death, has since taken on “all the duties” and the “role of mother” to her two younger sisters, Ebony and Amber.

“Even Amber, who was 12, said to Jade, ‘Will we still have money for rent and food?’ “. It’s heartbreaking,” he said.

Jordan and his partner Tegan are doing all they can to support the family and have set up a GoFundMe page in the hope of raising money for the girls, desperately hoping they can stay at the family home in Anglesea, Victoria, where they lived with their mother. .

“Teressa paid what she could for the kids and left them little pockets full of things around the house, little treasures and notes for them to find,” Jordan said. “I can’t imagine how difficult it is for them. »

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