Your pregnant girlfriend needs this!

There is one thing that your pregnant wife or girlfriend simply cannot go without.

If your girlfriend is pregnant, you need to consider what would happen if something were to happen to you in coming months.

This might sound morbid, but if you died, the future family would suffer from any lack of income or family-related activities that you would have contributed. Life insurance will give your dependants a large lump sum or monthly income to replace this.

If you will be a worker, you might not have to replace your entire income. It could just be your share of the joint bills such as child care and the mortgage, and also anticipated future bills for when the child is going to university, for example. Or it could be you want to support your partner for longer.

Stay-at-home parents have huge value

Before the baby arrives, the mother usually needs to arrange life insurance too. It doesn't matter if you will be a stay-at-home mother or whether you'll continue working. If you die early, your contribution to the household needs to be replaced or living standards will decline.

If your income was necessary for joint bills, that share needs to be replaced. If you are going to be a stay-at-home mum, you will probably still need cover.

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Get the peace of mind that comes with buying the right life insurance policy at the right price.

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Legal & General valued a non-working mum's tasks at over £30,000 per year. Naturally, an insurer will want to build the best case, but it is obvious that the tasks carried out by a stay-at-home parent are not cheap to replace.

Consider what you actually need

That said, that doesn't mean you need to replace it all. I suspect that most people will just want to replace the childcare element while continuing to work and, perhaps with the help of family and friends, you will probably take on the other chores or responsibilities that she did by yourself.

You will not be able to guess the exact amount you need, but you can work out what costs need to be replaced each year, and work out how many years those costs need to be replaced for, and then you have a rough figure. Our life insurance calculator should help you with this.

You might want to add something to make up for the hideous effects of inflation.

Both parents are essential

So far we have been talking the old-fashioned way, but if a father is a stay-at-home dad, the same applies for him as for stay-at-home mums. Naturally, if the mother goes to work and her income is important for childcare or household bills, that is another reason to insure her.

In short, when you know your other half is pregnant, it's already time to consider life insurance to protect your family, and if you're pregnant yourself, you will need to consider getting it nearer to the birth.

The price is right for both parents

Life insurance is surprisingly cheap when you shop around, with premiums for 30-year-olds being as low as £10 per month for £200,000 of cover. You can read more on the costs in Life insurance is cheapest for nine years.

Insurers offer the insurance extremely cheaply, even in many years making a loss on the premiums by paying out more in claims than they receive in payments. They can afford to do this because they invest the premiums in between receiving them and making payouts. Most of the time investments rise, which gives them their profits over the long run.

A sometimes even cheaper alternative to consider is family income benefit, which can also make the payout easier for the surviving adult to handle. It pays a monthly income instead of a one-off lump sum.

Life insurance ticks at least two out of three boxes

Whether you buy a non-compulsory insurance depends on three things:

a) Whether the burden would be too high if something goes wrong without insurance in place.

b) The cost of the insurance.

c) Your attitude to risk.

Life insurance easily passes the test for a) and b) for most people. That just leaves your attitude to risk. In England and Wales alone, about 40,000 people die under the age of 55, and that's during normal times with no major epidemics or other disasters. It is up to you to decide whether to save the premiums and take that chance with your family.

On the flip-side, you shouldn't feel that you always must take this insurance, as it's not only a personal decision for you and your family, but sometimes it just lines the pockets of salespeople and insurers for nothing. Read more in Don't get bullied into the wrong insurance.

More: Compare life insurance | Life's greatest question | Seven steps to cheap life insurance