Those who have the misfortune to lose a family service member and receive the proceeds of his or her life-insurance policy have a lot on their minds. Maybe they’re not paying attention to details on a daily basis. Who can blame them?

The policy insurers send a handy packet of “checks” with a note (the fine print) to let the payout money sit there as long as they like.

Here are two things to know about that money:

1) The money is in an interest-bearing account, but that insurer is making money on the account and gets five times the interest that is paid to the survivor. Survivors are getting maybe 1 percent interest, and the insurer more than 5 percent.

2) The money isn’t sitting in an account protected by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation -- it’s in a general fund (called a retained asset account) mingled with the insurer’s money. That means if the company folds, the money is not protected in any way. It just vanishes.

If you’re a beneficiary survivor struggling to make sense of things right now, I’ll make it easy for you: If you receive the proceeds of an insurance payout in the form of one of those checkbooks, take the checkbook to your own FDIC-insured bank and deposit it into a new account. If you want, break it up into smaller amounts and put it in CDs with varying maturity dates, keeping some in a regular account for immediate expenses.

Just don’t let it sit in the insurer’s account.

Write to Freddy Groves in care of King Features Weekly Service, P.O. Box 536475, Orlando, FL 32853-6475, or send e-mail to columnreply@gmail.com.

(c) 2010 King Features Synd., Inc.