Parents with work at home jobs as employees or independent contractors' is it appropriate for our employers or sponsors to take out life insurance policies on us naming themselves as the beneficiaries in the event of our death?

Most of us never gave this much thought until the news broke nationwide that a national retail chain had taken out 350,000 life insurance policies on its employees, naming itself as the beneficiary. Most or all of the employees did not have work at home jobs.

On the one hand you could argue that if an employer is paying the insurance premiums they have every right to purchase any life insurance product they wish. Perhaps some of their reasoning is the fact that they would incur certain expenses if they lost work at home employees' loss of revenue or production losses, cost of retraining, etc.

On the other hand, even if you have a work at home job and feel as though you're working on an island, it's an unsettling feeling to think that your employer has a life insurance policy on you and that in the event of your death, someone -- besides your own family -- would be paid a large sum of money.

This practice doesn't appear to be widespread, but if you're interested in knowing whether or not your company has an insurance policy on you, there are ways to find out. Many people with work at home jobs, whether they are work athome employees or a work at home independent contractors, have a contract with the company. This will most likely be the case if you are a work at home contractor. Check your contract to see if there is any mention of such an Agreement. If the subject is not addressed at all in the contract you can ask your supervisor or contact at the company whether or not the company has such a policy on you. If you work at home you may or may not be able to contact the same Human Resource Dept. as the regular on-site employees. Sometimes there is a special work at home Liaison Officer or Work at Home Coordinator who deals with the employees or contractors who work at home.

If you're not able to get information from the company itself you can look up their SEC filings. Such documents reflect their financial records and may include any revenue from life insurance payoffs.

I'm one of us hardworking work at home moms and personally, I wouldn't care if my employer had a life insurance policy on me but I'd prefer not to know about it if they did. Maybe a big pay off would help them get over the extremely huge loss they would suffer in the event that I wasn't here working at home, working my backside off for them all day. (At least I can dream.)

So fellow work at home moms, what do you think?