Car Insurance

How to buy insurance when you’re the trapeze-flying, bull-riding, self-employed parent of a 16-year-old driver.

Bello Nock has performed on a trapeze attached to a helicopter flying 500 feet above the ground, walked across a high wire 300 feet up, and donned an inflatable suit to let himself be stepped on by an 8,000-pound elephant. But even Nock, a daredevil clown with the Big Apple Circus, has life and disability insurance.

“You have to shop around and get someone to listen to your story,” says Nock, a father of three. His insurance broker, Rich Brooks of River Forest, Ill., has worked with Nock’s family for years and knows the risks and safety measures involved with the stunts.

Not every insurer is receptive. But AIG, CNA, Lloyds of London and Transamerica have all insured the Nerveless Nocks (there are eight members of the troupe), though Bello pays about three to five times as much as he would if he didn’t have a high-risk job, says Brooks.

If they search hard enough, motorcycle racers, race-car drivers, oil-rig firefighters and even people who are already in poor health can find life and disability insurance. A few auto-insurance companies accept almost anyone–including your teenage son and people convicted of driving under the influence. One life insurance company even covers people with HIV. But “it’s not unusual for one company to charge triple what another would charge for the same person, or to decline the case entirely,” says Byron Udell, president of AccuQuote, an insurance-quote service.