appeal presents two primary issues our time this morning is somewhat limited so i'd like to limit my remarks to the first issue concerning the question of whether the beneficiary change was effected in compliance with the policy insurer of that change and third retroactive effectiveness of the change of course without prejudice to any payment made by the insurance company in the in  the district court seems to have essentially collapsed the second and third steps into a single state and seems to have concluded that there could be no change effect of change without a transmission of the beneficiary change to the insurance company while the church was still alive now that necessarily had to disregard the third sentence of the beneficiary change provision concerning retroactive change without the beneficiary change being submitted during the insureds lifetime then there would be no reason to provide for retroactive effect back to the date the change was signed in just a minute that that seems to have been precisely what was considered and decided in explained by the indiana supreme court in the so we know that california law doesn't favor result where contract language is disregarded for example california civil code six hundred forty one instructs that all parts of a contractor be take be taken into account with each part of the contract being used to interpret the other parts of the contract we also cited some case law in the reply brief standing for the proposition that interpretations of insurance contracts which render certain language mere surplus important because it concisely explains why a beneficiary change provision essentially identical to the one involved here will be given retroactive effect once received by the insurance company as well as the related and extremely important point that there be no reason to provide for such rhetoric to vittie if the insurance company had intended that the beneficiary then fisher change could only be submitted while the insured was still alive now i realize that this war now addressing two members of the panel that produced the memorandum decision in the a c p versus valley forge case which has been discussed in parties briefs so i'd like to make a few comments about that case the p decision is not a lengthy one but if three places in that decision the panel said something which i think underscores the distinction between a c p and this case yes to be sure the pan pointed out that the insured in a c p her name was danielle had the exclusive right to change the beneficiary the policy because she was the policy on and for obvious reasons the appellee in this case loves that language but the p panel went a bit further than that and plainly left open the possibility that instructions given by the policy owner to a third party and clearly we have evidence of that here could be sufficient to bring about a valid beneficiary change even after the death of the insurer yeah well of course the c p is a memorandum disposition not binding in terms as as president it may be a clue to the thinking of two members of this panel at the time we thought it but i have to confess i had no memory as i got into this case of ever having decided or voted on a c p but let me let me look at this this policy and this case rather than that case sort of as i look at the change of beneficiary language in the policy it seems to me pretty obvious  that there must have been a request by the insured during his lifetime in order for the change to take effect how do we get around that i don't read it the same way your honor quite a quite honestly it certainly if somebody asked me to redra provision today i would take the word requested and change that will change the provision so that says instead of it will be effective as a date the policy when i requested it i would make it read it will be effective as of the date the policy are signed the beneficiary change that's what i would change you know but the problem with that reasoning is that if that's what the policy says and there's nothing that says the public can't say it that way but if the policy operates that way that means that someone can make a request in the sense of signing it give it to somebody else and say would you hand it in when i tell you to because i'm thinking about this and i may be on a trip to africa and i want you to be the one to do it but until the request is made thing that i've signed is pretty clear that the policy holder doesn't yet intend to make the change so this language says at the time the policy holder requests it which i think is a more secure way of finding out what the policy holder actually wants as a matter of policy that might be a better way to approach it but i think that interpretation has to disregard the final sense of the provision which says that the change will not appl any payment made or action taken biased before it was received recorded if if the change had to be made while the insured was still alive there would be no need for the retroactivity language i mean you know the only way a payment is going to be made under a life insurance policy is that the insurer dies ok so this third sentence seems to me to clearly address the possibility that by the time that change is submitted the loss may have occurred  you you use the hypothetical of somebody traveling overseas and trust in the form of somebody else that's not what we have here i mean we know we know that jeff jeffrey clark gave the form to sister for safe keeping pending the conclusion of his divorce proceedings in the bower's case for example the the policy owner was apparently terminally ill with cancer she made the beneficiary change she gave it to her sister in our instructions were a little bit cryptic she said in case something happens but i think she probably is contemplate your own demise i think it just seems to me that if you if you look at this provision and with particular emphasis on the final sentence concerning retroactive effect you consider the way the indiana supreme court construed a virtually identical provision the only reasonable interpretation is that it was permissible even if not necessarily desirable as a matter of certainty for the form t submitted after the death of the insured now in a c p there was a complete void of information or evidence about what happened between the time the policy on or sign the beneficiary changed form and  where her second husband discovered it weeks later after her death we don't have that issue here ok we have a relative trove of information about what happened before during and after the testimony of a third party witness who saw geoffrey clarke sign the form and who obviously i think hated it why he did it what why he wanted to make the change and that he knew he couldn't or even told by his lords he couldn't formally make the change until the divorce proceeding was concluded and finally we got the testimony of geoffrey sr that he entrusted to her for safekeeping pending the conclusion of that divorce is there anything in the record that tells us about jefferson or j district court and i just don't remember how much of this if any found its way into the record before this court his health as i understand it was really if it's in the district court then that's in the record he goes or i'm not sure what you're saying well i'm in between the end of the divorce proceeding and his death i'm sure he did i mean i think he manifested his intent to as you put it get around to it when he made a change back in two thousand and nine he was constrained from actually doing that until whatever data was in november of two thousand and twelve that he does you know that's a long time between signing and the ability that is in the divorce becomes final so the injunction is lifted and he had barely didn't seek any i mean you can she can modification of the court but he didn't do it i mean a lot a lot of things could have changed in his head knows i think pretty much almost three years well i think that's certainly possible but that's i mean that's where i guess i would say there is no no evidence whatsoever and then six months later it becomes final is that still the case i i really don't know i know i know from reviewing that the divorce file in this case it was a little bit of your you know in the sense that i think jeffrey went leon represented for the last two or three years the proceeding and frankly i'm not sure how active a participant he even was by that point in time he had counsel at first but after a while did not and judge fletcher i'm just trying to understand  how do we know that the finale of proceedings one of them the sixteenth it's i think was presented to the district court by way of either in iran into a response to the request for admissions in other words it was it was not disputed below it wasn't like evidence of a piece of paper that he had anything like that it was no i've seen such a piece of paper i do not believe it's to my recollection that it did not make its way into the evidence before the district court has probably not in the excerpt as of now just leisure just to respond to something you said a minute ago you surmise that a lot of things could have changed between may two thousand and nine in the end of a divorce proceeding i forgot to mention i wanted to just remind the court that in their declaration of just sister my client she did comment on the fact that between may two thousand and nine and the end of the divorce proceedings they would have occasional discussions where the matter of the beneficiary change would come  that policy or main name change beneficiaries or can benefit fisheries in any time during the lifetime of the insured after the name interchange is recorded at our home office it will be effective as of the date the policy owner requested it and the district court correctly observed that quote this  put it in the mail that is all requests yes during his lifetime i think that probably would be ok in this case why if you what if you had to a messenger you say you sign it and you have to messenger say take it down to the instead of putting in the mail let's say you give it a messenger that's in use fed ex or sort of the well you're out of there are cases on death bed cases where a person is dying and they you know what i'm going to get along at all if you keep not if the insurer does not communicate with the insurance company so let's say he signs a form and gives it to a messenger a commercial messenger is other requests it could be you know he hasn't the ability to mail it to the insurance company that's sufficient here and none of those facts exist those cases involve policy that use the word request this this policy none of the cases you refer to they use the word for us i don't i think the same language is here in my policy or i'm sorry you said there are cases yes ok those cases involve a policy that would do the same as this one the case is the death penalty cases i can't answer that you know i don't i don't know but but he didn't change his mind he didn't he didn't say asked for the form back he hands of the sister and says i've signed the form i want you to send it to the shortest company when my divorce becomes fin white what why isn't the request well the district court observed that a request requires a communication with the insurance company but you've already said that if you put it in the mail that's a request even though they haven't received it why isn't going to school the source saying i'm giving it to you for delivery to the insurance company why isn't that a request case i mean you have the option of asking for it back yes you have an option changing instructions but if you handed over you hand over and you say send this insurance company and then you never asked for it back why isn't th difference between making a request to a third party some years before and making a direct request to the insurance company what is the material difference explain it to me because i don't understand it has to do with evidence of intent evidence of a recurrent wish to change the beneficial but none of that is none of that is in the policy terms policy terms says you've got to make a request it doesn't say you've got to have a c where this thing reaches the request reaches the insurance company after the after the short is dead otherwise that sentence makes no sense  request means a request to the insurance company none of that last and the one who says it will not apply to any payment made or action taken by us before it was recorded how can that sentence ever have any meaning unless you have a situation where the request is made before the while the issue is alive which has to be because requests have to be made before they don't reach the insurance company until long after he is dead and they already paid out the money how how else does one make sense of the provision of the sentence means that that would be the earliest date on which the change had to be effective but give me a scenario where that would that sentence would come into play i mean if you mean example of how i would have an effect that there would be consistent with your theory of the case if you know if the insured signed  thought i mean he makes a change dies and then some time passes to the point where the insurance company has actually paid out the money which we know they don't do in twenty four hours by the you know it take them some time so that somehow the form of the request must have reached them after he died or else that sentence makes no sense at all but it has to be that it has to contemplate exactly the case for us i can't imagine what other scenario with contemplated and you haven't given me any although if you have probably had more time to think about it then i well let me let can i take a slightly different tack here for purposes of the question i'm about to ask i'm going to assume that several of judge kozinski hypotheticals result in a request that is to say i drop it in the mail that request i give it to fed ex that's request i give it to a courier that's a request i give it to my sister with directions to submit it to the insurance company that's a request is there anything in this record that tells us that jeff ever directed his sister to transmit it to the insurance company only her declaration well her declaration doesn't say that that's the only we all read your declaration her declaration says jeff told me he was sending these items to me for safe keeping because hypotheticals you know we there's evidence that we've objected to it's hearsay that he gave it to her for safekeeping essentially but no direction that is being submitted to the i'm sorry is there any evidence you did change his mind there's not no evidence one way or the other you know we don't know what his state of my side of state of mind was in the three and a half years after may of two thousand  briefly the it seems to me the word requested is used in the second sentence of this provision it's hardly ambiguous if you're only looking at the second sentence once you look at the third sentence it's pretty clear what it means under those beneficiary change form itself as far as transmitted to the insurance company no he didn't i mean his first order of business i think was concluding his divorce proceed as i said earlier he was a young man he died suddenly he probably wasn't expecting his own death caught a plane his own death and let's let's bear in mind in ours the instructions were not much more specifically instructions here the the owner gave it to her sister and said hang on to this in case something happens and then that's all she said it was a specific instruction to pass it on to the insurance company there i've been with cases where the about hours versus cushion a case of indiana supreme court decision construing what i think is the identical beneficiary we receive it it says when we record oh well on that point i mean we don't know if when this insurance company received it was recorded but in one of our briefs i cited a couple of california cases which say recording is a ministerial act if it's something outside of what the insurer or the owner is our over and occurs subsequent to whatever the owners had to do we don't hold it against the are there a couple couple