Marriage Insurance. Seriously.

After decades of round-the-clock tv commercials offering health, car and life insurance quotes in fifteen minutes or less, featuring ducks and gekkos and who knows what else, we all know all about insurance for cars, homes, life insurance, funeral insurance, and even that some celebrities insure their various body parts.

The first celebrity known to insure a body part was a guy that most of us have never heard of — Ben Turpin, a cross-eyed silent movie star, insured his eyes for $20,000 in case they uncrossed. Other celebs followed, Betty Grable insured her legs for a million bucks, and Bette Davis reportedly had a $28,000 policy against gaining weight. (I don’t know about her, but it would be REALLY tough for me to step away from the Twinkies if I knew I’d be getting a $28,000 check in the mail.)

Rumors abounded a few years ago that Jennifer Lopez’s various body parts (specifically, her booty) were insured in the billions, and Michael Flatley, the Lord of The Dance guy’s legs are supposedly insured for $25 million. Tom Jones insured his chest hair (ewww) for $7 million. Keith Richards’ hands are only insured for $1.6 million, which seems paltry by Lord of the Dance standards.

And if all that doesn’t seem odd enough, I recently I learned that you can actually purchase marriage insurance. As in, if you stay married for 25 years or longer (and the Census Bureau says you have about a 33% chance of that happening,) you get to collect some sort of cash payout. The insurance also covers you in case of divorce, one of the leading causes of going broke.

How about insurance for daters? Like if you go out on 15 bad dates in a row, you get $1000. If your boyfriend cheats on you, you get $5000. And if you date some loser for 8 years and he won’t commit, you get $25,000 and a free plane ticket to Jamaica and all the banana dacquiri coupons you can stuff in your purse.

XO,