How Are Your Children Protected If You're Hospitalized When Travelling Abroad?

If you're on a trip with your child and yourself, enjoying a beautiful bonding moment, you would be extra cautious for those few days. However, there might be a situation where you're playfully chasing your child around, and you slip and hurt yourself. This requires you to be hospitalized for a few days, and now you need someone to take care of your child or find a way to take them back home.

You can easily arrange for this through your Travel Insurance! How? Keep reading.

Getting a Travel Insurance that covers your child in the event of the parents’ or guardians’ hospitalization is vital. This cover is known as Escort of the Minor Child or Unaccompanied Minor Cover.

Children under 18 are not allowed to travel without an adult accompanying them. When flying internationally, they would require a consent form from the parent/guardian who has accompanied them. In other situations, a request can be placed to the airlines for the child to fly solo. Many airlines also offer their own escort to accompany the child back home.

With a travel insurance plan, you can request a family member to come to your destination and pick up your minor child. And don't worry about the additional cost; your plan has you and them covered!

The main reason for purchasing your international travel insurance is to financially assist and protect you in another country during an unexpected turn of events. Here, requiring emergency medical hospitalization for yourself and needing assistance to ensure your minor child returns home safe is another example of an unforeseen circumstance. 

With an Escort of Minor Child Coverage, you can rest assured about your child’s safety.

How does this work?

When you request your travel insurance to help escort your minor child, they will provide monetary assistance for a family member to travel round trip to the current city and back to the original city of residence. This cover guarantees the care and safety of your minor child in the hands of an escort, in the unfortunate event of hospitalization, or even death. 

Most insurances provide this as an add-on cover, but with Digit's International Travel Insurance plan (Digit On the Move Policy), this cover is inclusive of your policy! 

Always be sure to go through your policy schedule entirely and thoroughly before purchasing to better understand your investment.

Yes! Safety is our priority. When you purchase your international travel insurance from Digit, you can rest assured that in the event of hospitalization or even death of the insured, their unaccompanied child is safe until they are reunited with their family.

What’s Covered

Under this cover, you will be reimbursed for the following expenses:

• Round trip cost of a family member to escort the unattended minor child(ren) back to their city of residence.
• Actual cost of the economy class Common Carrier ticket using the most direct route for the Minor Children back to their city of residence less actual/possible refund of the scheduled return ticket of the Minor Children; provided the hospitalization of the insured occurs not within 3 days of the completion of the trip.
• You will also be covered for a maximum of one Escort of Minor Child event during your policy period

What’s Not Covered

Under your travel insurance policy, any exclusion mentioned in the ‘General Exclusion Section’ of your travel policy wordings document is not covered here as well.

Some requirements you need to be aware of are

The hospitalization needs to be advised by a medical practitioner attending to the insured. Such hospitalization is admissible under “Emergency Medical Treatment and Evacuation” or “Emergency Accidental Treatment and Evacuation” cover of your travel insurance policy.

The cover under this benefit would be available for a maximum of two children. We shall indemnify a maximum of one Escort of a Minor Child event during the policy period.

It is a Condition Precedent to the Company's liability hereunder that the Company or the ASP also approves the need for the return of Minor Children.

No other adult has accompanied the insured to take care of the children.

Minimum documents required to claim for Escort of a Minor Child with Digit

While filing a claim for Escort of a Minor Child, one must contact the customer service helpline immediately before arranging the tickets of the escort. You will then be asked to produce:

• Bills and Payment receipts for previously booked air ticket.  
• Bills and payment receipts for the newly booked air ticket.  
• Medical certificate stating the circumstances and date of admission of the insured.

Now that you know you can protect your child when worse comes to worst, you can travel without any stress on your mind! This cover is built especially for the safety of your little one.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purpose, collected across the Internet and with respect to Digit’s On-the-Move Policy document. For detailed coverage, exclusions, and conditions about Escort of a Minor Child cover, go through your travel policy document carefully.