Court Opinion

ID: 9551469
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:54:06.048528+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:23:56.526531
License: Public Domain

HENRIOD, Justice
(dissenting).
Appeal from a summary judgment in favor of three children as beneficiaries under a group life insurance policy in which one Lavender was the insured and his then wife, Helen Smith Lavender, was named as beneficiary. In my opinion, the case should be reversed.
Lavender married Helen Smith Lavender in 1941, who divorced him on June 13, 1960, obtaining custody of the three children mentioned above who then were Shana, 17, Dean, 14, and Joann, 5. The findings of fact in the decree recited the existence of the policy and said it “should be kept in force and effect by the defendant and the plaintiff should remain as the beneficiary of this policy, but in the event she remarries or dies, the three children should become the beneficiaries, and the defendant should be permanently restrained from changing the beneficiaries.” This gratuity obviously attempted to change the terms of a policy of insurance, — which a divorce court can’t do.
On December 14, 1962, Lavender married Bernice Lewis, while his ex-wife, Helen Smith Lavender, was still unmarried and alive, and still beneficiary under the policy. She remarried on January 27, 1963. About a month after he married Bernice, but while Helen was still unmarried, alive, and without Lavender having sought or obtained any modification of the divorce decree- between him and Helen, and in complete disregard and violation of the court’s restraining order against changing beneficiaries, Lavender applied to the insurance company and presumed to change the beneficiaries on the policy to “Bernice Lavender, Wife, if living, otherwise to William Dean Lavender, Son.” The insurance company recognized the application, and noted the change as did Lavender’s employer. About two years later, in March 1965, Bernice divorced Lavender and the policy remained unaltered, with the unauthorized change of beneficiaries remaining on the records of the insurance company and his employer, until Lavender’s death eight years later, — at which time Lavender technically had no wife,— but nonetheless a beneficiary.
Counsel for Bernice Lewis urges that 1) Bernice, the second wife, is the sole beneficiary under the policy and 2) that that part of Lavender’s first divorce decree, restraining change of the beneficiaries, was spent when the minor children attained their majority.
As to 1) : Bernice claims as beneficiary on the strength of her status as “wife,” (though her divorce decree did not mention the policy), coupled with the assumption that her designation as beneficiary was valid and authorized by the insurance contract, in which she claimed a vested interest resolvable on the death of Lavender.
*487In the first place, Lavender’s first wife, Helen, at the inception of the contract, was the named beneficiary and entitled to any proceeds under the policy and was entitled thereto at the time Lavender attempted to change the beneficiaries, — an attempt which the court specifically decreed he could not indulge, which decree still was pending.
Counsel for Bernice suggests that the court cannot change the terms of an insurance policy. This writer agrees. Nonetheless such court can control who must pay the premiums and who shall receive the proceeds, after the named beneficiary gets them, and whether one may be restrained from changing beneficiaries especially in domestic relations matters. Our statutes 1 and the authorities generally 2 support such a view. Lavender’s abortive attempt to circumvent the subsisting divorce decree was a contempt and flouting of the court’s order and invalid as being against public policy, as well as an invitation for disciplinary action by the court.
The upshot of this case, therefore, is that Bernice is not entitled to anything, nor are William Dean Lavender, Shana L. Amador or Joann L. Sylvester, (all adults), since they were never named beneficiaries under the policy; and that the court’s decree was valid as to 1) the injunction against changing the beneficiaries, but 2) invalid in its attempt actually to change the beneficiaries, — since the latter was an attempt to change the terms of the insurance contract, which terms, as a matter of fact, were the gut terms thereof.
The second upshot of this case is that the attempted change in beneficiaries being void, leaves Helen Smith Lavender as the only named beneficiary under the policy entitled to its proceeds upon the death of Lavender.
The third upshot of this case is that the plaintiff insurance company joined all possible and potential interested parties except the one who, from the record here, was entitled — Helen Smith Lavender.
The judgment should be vacated and the case remanded for further proceedings. One wonders what would have ensued had the insurance company paid the named beneficiary according to the terms of its written contract, after expunging its records of the void attempt by Lavender to change the beneficiary. At the very least, the original beneficiary, Helen Smith Lavender, should have been joined in this lawsuit as a proper and indispensable party. One also wonders what the United States would do , in the case of a divorce court changing the beneficiary of a non-negotiable government defense savings bond. (All emphasis added.)

. Title 30-3-5, Utah Code Annotated 1953.

. Equitable Life v. Wilkins, 44 F.Supp. 594 (E.D.N.Y.1942) ; Dixon v. Dixon, 184 So.2d 478 (1966) ; Peckham v. Met. Life Ins. Co., 415 F.2d 312 (10th Cir. 1969).