Source: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/284/493
Timestamp: 2014-07-12 18:27:21
Document Index: 365415040

Matched Legal Cases: ['art. 4', '§ 402', '§ 13', '§ 300', '§ 511', '§ 13', '§ 514']

SINGLETON et al. v. CHEEK et al. | LII / Legal Information Institute
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284 U.S. 493 (52 S.Ct. 257, 76 L.Ed. 419)
SINGLETON et al. v. CHEEK et al.
[HTML] Mr. A. G. C. Bierer, Jr., of Guthrie, Okl., for petitioners.
In the administration following the death of Mary Lucinda Singleton and the infant son of Lee Ray Jackson, the same court determined that petitioners were entitled to the disability insurance which accrued before the death of the insured, but that respondents were entitled to the commuted value of the insurance falling due after the death of the beneficiary, holding that the commuted balance of such insurance was payable to the estate of the insured, but vested in the heirs next surviving within the permitted class of beneficiaries designated by the War Risk Insurance Act of 1917, c. 105, art. 4, § 402, 40 Stat. 398, 409, as amended by the Act of 1919, c. 16, § 13, 41 Stat. 371, 375, and by the World War Veterans' Act of 1924, c. 320, §§ 300, 303, 43 Stat. 607, 624, 625 (38 USCA §§ 511 note, 514 note). The case was appealed to a state district court, where a different judgment was rendered. From that judgment an appeal was taken to the Supreme Court of Oklahoma, where it was twice heard. That court first sustained the petitioners' contention. Subsequently, upon rehearing, it held in favor of the respondents in respect of the commuted installments accruing after the death of the beneficiary, and in favor of petitioners as to those accruing before her death, following a decision of the Supreme Court of Kentucky in Sutton's Executor v. Barr's Administrator, 219 Ky. 543, 293 S. W. 1075, in which that court had decided that the heirs of the insured in being at the time of the death of the beneficiary took the property, and not those who were heirs at the time of the death of the insured.
We are of opinion that the first decision was right, and the second wrong. Undoubtedly, by section 15 of the War Risk Insurance Amending Act of 1919,
war risk insurance, after the death of the designated beneficiary, became payable to such person or persons within the permitted class of beneficiaries (enumerated in section 402, Act of 1917, as amended by § 13, Act of 1919 (
41 Stat. 375)) as would, under the laws of the state of the residence of the insured, be entitled to his personal property in case of intestacy. The second decision of the state Supreme Court, therefore, would have been entirely correct if no change had been made in the statute. But a radical change had been effected prior to the award of insurance made by the Veterans' Bureau on August 18, 1925. The Act of March 4, 1925, c. 553, 43 Stat. 1302, 1310 (38 USCA § 514), amended section 303 of the World War Veterans' Act of 1924 (which had in turn amended and modified the preceding acts) to read as follows: 'If no person within the permitted class be designated as beneficiary for yearly renewable term insurance by the insured either in his lifetime or by his last will and testament or if the designated beneficiary does not survive the insured or survives the insured and dies prior to receiving all of the two hundred and forty installments or all such as are payable and applicable, there shall be paid to the estate of the insured the present value of the monthly installments thereafter payable, said value to be computed as of date of last payment made under any existing award.'
By that amendment, the rule, which, upon the happening of the contingencies named in the prior acts, limited the benefit of the unpaid installments to persons within the designated class of permittees, was abandoned, and 'the estate of the insured' was wholly substituted as the payee. All installments, whether accruing before the death of insured or after the death of the beneficiary named in the certificate of insurance, as a result, became assets of the estate of the insured upon the instant of his death, to be distributed to the heirs of the insured in accordance with the intestacy laws of the state of his residence, such heirs to be determined as of the date of his death, and not as of the date of the death of the beneficiary. The state courts, with almost entire unanimity, have reached the same conclusion.
'Sec. 15. That if any person to whom such yearly renewable term insurance has been awarded dies, or his rights are otherwise terminated after the death of the insured, but before all of the two hundred and forty monthly installments have been paid, then the monthly installments payable and applicable shall be payable to such person or persons within the permitted class of beneficiaries as would, under the laws of the State of residence of the insured, be entitled to his personal property in case of intestacy; and if the permitted class of beneficiaries be exhausted before all of the two hundred and forty monthly installments have been paid, then there shall be paid to the estate of the last surviving person within the permitted class the remaining unpaid monthly installments.' (
41 Stat. 376.)