Court Opinion

ID: 9755550
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 20:42:29.682193+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:09.029714
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Mb. Justice Musmanno :
This is one of those unfortunate eases, where one of two deserving women must suffer. Jane Hundertmark married Paul Hundertmark in 1925 and divorced him in 1948. Doris Hundertmark married Paul Hundertmark in 1949 and became his widow on May 15, 1951. Prior to their divorce, Paul and Jane Hundertmark entered into a separation agreement wherein Paul agreed that the beneficiary of the group insurance policy which he carried would “irrevocably” be Jane’s. The insurance policy gave the insured the right to change the beneficiary. On April 6, 1951, Paul Hundertmark availed himself of this right and made his then wife, Doris, the beneficiary.
In the resulting litigation between the divorced wife and the widow over this insurance the lower court awarded the benefits of the policy to the widow. I agree with the lower court that the equities are with the defendant “because she was not a party to the separation agreement, had no knowledge of its provisions, did not induce the insured, her husband, to make her the beneficiary, and he had continued to reserve the right to change the beneficiary in his contract with the Insurance Company.”
Jane Hundertmark claims under an assignment but the insurance certificate prohibits an assignment. In finding for the widow the lower court, distinguished the cases of Pennsylvania Railroad Company v. Wolfe, 203 Pa. 269 and The Supreme Lodge, Knights and Ladies of Honor v. Ulanowsky, 246 Pa. 591. The majority *147opinion here declares that the distinctions are “mere differentiations without any pertinent legal significance.” It is, I suppose, a matter of view but I see a distinction between obligations arising out of a contract to marry and developments following a contract to dissolve a marriage.
There can be no doubt a mutuality of consideration flows from an ante-nuptial agreement, but that certainty does not follow in a post-nuptial agreement since already the parties are beholden to each other. Although the agreement entered into between Paul and Jane Hundertmark states “that the beneficiary of said policy, his present wife, shall be made irrevocable,” the grant could not be irrevocable since the grantor withheld the right in the insurance policy to change the beneficiary. If Jane was cognizant of the provisions in the insurance policy and it must be assumed that she was so cognizant since her claim is based on the insurance policy as it existed at the time of the agreement, she must be charged with knowledge of the provision which could oust her from benefits of the policy by the simple act of the change of beneficiary.
Without entering into any situation which brought about the divorce between Jane and Paul Hundertmark, I believe that Paul owed a greater duty to Doris Hundertmark, after he married her, than to his previous wife. Jane agreed to leave him, Doris agreed to live with him. When Jane entered into the agreement to depart from her husband she envisaged the cessation of an intimate relationship and the beginning of a distant one. On that business basis the law required her, short of fraud being practised upon her, to inquire into every provision of the policy supposedly assigned to her. To me it is not equitable that Doris Hundertmark, an innocent party to the transaction should suffer because of the failure of Jane Hundertmark to probe into her rights.
*148The majority.distinguish the eases of Shay v. Merchants Banking Trust Company, 335 Pa. 101, and Fidelity Trust Company v. Travelers Insurance Company, 320 Pa. 161, but I still believe .they are authoritative of the issue before us. In the Shay case this Court said: (p. 103) “As a result of this provision, plaintiff had no vested right or interest in the insurance but only an expectation of benefit, and when her husband exercised his right to change the beneficiary her expectation became ‘merely a prospect that had vanished’: Fidelity Trust Company v. Travelers Insurance Co., 320 Pa. 161, 166. In almost all jurisdictions it is held that, when the right to change the beneficiary is reserved, the insured may assign the policy without the beneficiary’s consent . . .” (Italics supplied)
In the Fidelity case, this Court, speaking through Chief Justice Maxey, said: 166) “When defendant’s husband exercised his undoubted right to change the beneficiary, the wife’s expectation became merely a prospect that had vanished.”
I repeat that it is unfortunate that one of two deserving women must be denied the benefits of the insurance policy in this case. However, if the law, as I see it, must award the benefits of the policy to Mrs. Doris Hundertmark I see some poetic justice in this: Of the two Mrs. Hundertmarks who vowed to live with Paul Hundertmark “until death did them part,” Doris Hundertmark is the one who did.