Is there a life insurance policy for a 86 year old female who lives in a nursing home?

Life insurance for anyone over the age of 70 is virtually nonexistant or frightfully expensive. You could look into those "tv" life insurance policies for burial insurance but the pay out is not that much.

Essentially no life insurance company is going to insure a person that old and in a nursing home. It would be a lose, lose situation for them.

Not really, you may find a accident policy if they die in a accident.

Also there are a few limited pay policies, they over the first 3 to 5 years only pay you back the premium and then the face amount after that.
But the fact she is in a nursing home also means her health is poor, so the preimium may be more than you would collect if she died, or close to the same amount

You can look into a Final Expense plan; which is exactly what it sounds like but you're only allowed to take out a certain amount. It is meant only to cover burial expenses; not really meant to leave an inheritance to relatives.

You can check into it but as the others have pointed out the expense of taking out a policy on someone that age wouldn't be worth it to you. You could take the same money and put it into a bank account and save it for the same purpose.

Only thing I would add to the previous posts is that life insurance for someone this age MAY make sense IF her estate is large enough so that significant estate taxes will be due upon her death - in this case life insurance can help offset the loss of value to her heirs, but only as long as the cost of the insurance is less than the estate tax rate (45%). I'm talking about someone with an estate worth at least $3.5 million. However, as noted, life insurance at this age is very expensive, and should not be pursued without a very good analysis by someone intimately familiar with estate tax issues in her state. Given the uncertainties of what's going to happen with estate taxes over the next couple of years, I would be very wary about using this tactic - but again, an expert in the field of estate planning should be consulted.

Ebaines - If someone had $3.5 million dollars I don't think they'd be without life insurance at this point in their life as someone would have pointed out to them that it would be a nice thing to have to leave the heirs some money. You did have some good points in your post though.

I am still under the impression that the OP and the lady in the nursing home are not rich folks but everyday ordinary working people who didn't have the money to get an insurance policy taken out years ago and now it's essentially "too late".

I agree with Nikosmom about the burial insurance. My mother had purchased a pre-paid funeral and had that paid off years before she went. It was not that expensive. I think she only paid for the funeral expense for about 1-2 years.