Opinion ID: 1976398
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: insurance provision

Text: IT IS FURTHER ORDERED AND ADJUDGED that the Plaintiff, Robert Monreal, shall hereafter have no further interest as beneficiary or otherwise in and to any life insurance policies, endowment or annuity contracts standing in the name of or insuring the life of the Defendant, Catherine A. Monreal; and the Defendant, Catherine A. Monreal, shall hereafter have no further interest as beneficiary or otherwise in and to any life insurance policies, endowment or annuity contracts standing in the name of or insuring the life of the Plaintiff, Robert Monreal. [Emphasis added.] There were separate sections dealing with custody, visitation, and property settlement. Appellant contends that the wording of the judgment indicates an intent that Robert Monreal be required to retain all five children as beneficiaries of his life insurance until the youngest reached eighteen. The provision at issue is placed under the heading, Support for Minor Children, and not under the Property Settlement or Insurance provisions of the judgment. The judgment also provides that the life insurance was required as further support for the minor children until that obligation was completed as above provided in the judgment. The words above provided referred to those provisions which required the father to pay specified amounts each week as child support. As the number of children who were minors decreased, so did the amount of the payments. Further, the support obligation only continued until each child attain[ed] the age of eighteen (18) years or complete[d] high school, whichever event was later. This sliding scale, coupled with the concurrence of the insurance and support requirements, convinces us that the Court of Appeals did not err in finding that the purpose of the life insurance provision was security for the support of each child until the age of eighteen. It would be internally inconsistent to interpret this provision, placed in proximity to the support provision of the judgment, as meaning that the insurance must be maintained for the benefit of Robert Monreal's sons and daughter after they turned eighteen just because one or more was still under that age. Under the same heading, the deceased was required, by language similar to that at issue here, to pay extraordinary health expenses of the children until his obligation to support said minor children has been fully completed. Just as we could not inconsistently construe the parallel clause regarding the life insurance, we cannot believe that this language means that the father was required to pay health expenses for the children that attained the age of majority just because one or more of his other children were still minors. Looking at the responsibilities imposed upon Robert Monreal under the judgment of divorce as a whole, it is clear that the insurance provisions were intended to benefit only minor children. It would frustrate the intent of the parties to allow the adult sons and daughter to benefit from an insurance policy required as adequate security for their support as minors. In support of their interpretation of the agreement between the parties, appellants cite Kasper v Metropolitan Life Ins Co, 412 Mich 232; 313 NW2d 904 (1981), in which there was a similar life insurance beneficiary arrangement made for a minor child who, when his divorced father was killed, was only two years old. A plurality of this Court held that the minor child was entitled to the proceeds of the insurance policy even though the divorced father had not kept the minor child as a beneficiary. We find Kasper unhelpful because in that case there were no other children who had reached majority for whom a claim was made and there was no suggestion in awarding the proceeds of the policy to the minor child that he was receiving more than the support to which he would have been entitled prior to his reaching majority or graduation, whichever occurred latest. [3] We find no error in the reasoning of the lower courts that the father had no authority to remove his children as beneficiaries from the policy before they reached age eighteen. The primary claim to the life insurance proceeds is for the support of the minor child. We, therefore, do not agree with the appellant's assertion that the deceased was not able to remove any of the children as beneficiaries until they were all eighteen years old. Under the terms of the judgment, Robert Monreal was required only to designate the minor children  as beneficiaries. Accordingly, the change of beneficiaries was effective except as to the support of the minor child. Affirmed, costs to the estate.