Can I stay on my ex’s health insurance?
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Can I stay on my ex’s health insurance?
My husband and I are filing for divorce; we are still friends even living
together. He told me that if I don’t change my name he can keep me on his health insurance because the insurance company won’t know we are divorced. If he does that is there a way that his employer or health insurance company can find out? If they can and do, what happens to us?
Asked on March 9, 2016 under Family Law, Arizona
Answers:
SJZ, Member, New York Bar / FreeAdvice Contributing Attorney
Answered 8 years ago | Contributor
Legally, you can't stay on his insurance: unmarried adults may not be on each other's insurance (except that an adult child may be kept on his/her parent's insurance until, I believe, age 26). Lying to the insurer is insurance fraud, and can subject you to a variety of civil and even criminal penalties.
How could they find out? It's true that there is no central registry of who is married and who is not, and also that the court does not proactively mail/send out divorce notices to insurers. However, in today's internet, you-can-Google-anything, and everything-is-in-a-database, marital status can come out in too many ways. Divorce records, for example, are public, and if the insurer becomes suspicious (due to, say, his company's HR department saying something, or you and he living at different addresses), they could very easily find this.
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