Court Opinion

ID: 9444987
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:17:37.37732+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:05.451122
License: Public Domain

CHAMBERS, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I dissent. Probably more justice would be done if we adhered to the strict record of what military personnel had done at the Veterans Administration in way of designation of beneficiaries rather than probing miscellaneous statements of the deceased. However, I do not object too strenuously to Kendig and Aguilar, cited supra. I accept them. But there the trial court found the facts only one way: that everything the veteran did was consistent and'^inted to intent to change a beneficiary.
I agree with the majority that the quoted statement of the decedent made to his brother is inconclusive. I would agree that Kendig and Aguilar govern if the trial court had disbelieved Virginia Barbee, the decedent’s sister. But the trial judge believed everybody, believed that Wallace Gulley told his sister, Virginia, in May, 1946, that he, Wallace, was having trouble with Mary Jane and had left his insurance the way he had previously made it out, that is, to his mother.
I believe the trial court thought Ken-dig was applicable, but I would not apply it when there is a finding that the marine did tell his wife on separate days that his insurance ran to her and then in between statements to the wife tells his sister that it is made payable to his mother. We take enough risk when we change the beneficiary upon the basis of a confidential statement, which in many cases may in fact actually be a statement made only for the reason that the marine has a present intention to change his beneficiary. To go ahead and change the policy when the marine has made subsequent inconsistent statements seems to me to accept too weak proof.