Do You Ever Stop Funding the Policy?

The answer isn't a year. It's a set of conditions, and any one of them can arrive first.

The MEC line is the hard stop. Every policy has a maximum funding speed set by the tax code, and going past it changes the tax treatment of every distribution for the life of the contract, permanently. Carriers track it and most will refuse the excess or return it. If your design has you paying the maximum non-MEC premium, stopping means you've hit the ceiling for that year, not that you're finished.

The PUA rider window is the soft stop. Many riders are only available for a set number of years, often seven to ten, or they require a minimum contribution each year to stay open. Skip a year and the rider can close permanently. So be careful in any year money is tight: reducing the PUA is the right emergency move, and letting it lapse entirely is not.

Then there's the design's own logic. A policy built for retirement income has a funding phase and a distribution phase, and the switch usually happens when the income starts. Nothing stops you from paying premium into a policy you're also drawing from, and it's rarely the efficient use of the dollar. That money generally does more somewhere else at that point.

The base premium on a pay-to-100 whole life policy keeps coming due whether or not you're adding PUAs. Two ways to handle it later: dividends can be directed to cover the premium, which many well-funded participating policies can eventually do, or you can elect reduced paid-up, which converts the policy to a smaller death benefit with no further premiums. Reduced paid-up is a one-way door and it locks in a lower number, so it belongs at the end of the list rather than the front.

Dividends aren't guaranteed, so a plan that assumes the policy pays for itself at year 12 needs a version where it doesn't. Run the guaranteed column and see what the premium obligation looks like there.

The other reason people stop is that the policy did its job. Cash value is where it needed to be, the loan capacity covers what it was built to cover, and new dollars have a better use. That's a legitimate stopping point and it's the one to aim for. Decide it deliberately rather than drifting into it after a year you couldn't pay.

Whatever you decide, tell the carrier. A policy that stops receiving premium without an election just runs on its own internal logic, which on an IUL means charges keep coming out of account value until something runs low. Making it official gets you a confirmation in writing of what the policy looks like from here.