Thank you, everyone, for confirming my instinct that dad no longer needs any life insurance and for distilling the issues for me so clearly. Also, thanks very much for the back-up recommendations on the policy type to get if dad insists he must have some life insurance. I feel better equipped to discuss this with him now. Special props to lakemom for recommending a side gig -- dad is great at photography, has been using it to barter, and plans to get help building a webpage to turn the hobby into a bit of an income stream.
I have been talking to dad about an emergency fund for quite some time, and he completely agrees in principle -- he's actually the one who taught me the importance of one while I was still in high school! -- but the trouble is getting him past the high expenses so that he nets positive on a monthly basis. Honestly, the hang-up about funeral costs is his own -- while I'd prefer that his assets cover his funeral costs, it's not a big deal to me, as I will take care of his burial wishes no matter what. My greater concern is that he has high anxiety and depression, and he worked very hard for 35 years (until being unfairly canned, then rapidly burning through his emergency fund) to give us kids a fantastic foundation in life, yet he is now suffering mentally from the stress of constantly being on the verge of having zero cash, paying his bills late, etc. I want him to have an emergency fund for his own peace of mind. I'll also continue to work with him on cutting his expenses -- we have made some good progress -- but he lived high-income/high-expenses for so long that he is mentally tied to the idea that he should be able to have the same lifestyle as before he lost his job, got divorced, had to sell our family home, legal troubles, close relatives died, all within an extremely short timespan.
Regarding the college student loans, while I understand the folks saying the kids should take responsibility, there are so many reasons why I just don't think that's fair in this situation. First, one brother and I did pay off all of the loans on which we were the signers or co-signers (and we 100% covered all costs of our graduate-level educations, so parents never had any involvement in that part); the second brother is barely making ends meet, and is so far in the hole from other debts, that there is no chance in hell he could make payments for at least several years. Second, our dad had not shared with us that there even were outstanding loans for over a decade. Only when my parents divorced about two years ago was that revealed, plus that he had only been making minimum payments or skipping payments, racking up interest, late fees, etc., plus he had squandered hundreds of thousands of dollars that should have been in my parents' accounts. As such, third, he royally screwed over my mother financially. Fourth, the divorce split those debts 50/50 between my parents, and my mom then made a lot of sacrifices to pay off her share in full! After she did that for us, I feel like paying my dad's share would be to reward his extremely poor behavior and to slap my mom upside the head. We have confirmed that the remaining loans are in dad's name alone, so we're just gonna let that ride.