Court Opinion

ID: 9752238
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 17:50:59.28365+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:11.301859
License: Public Domain

WATHEN, C.J.,
dissenting.
[¶ 9] I respectfully dissent with respect to the life insurance benefits. In my judgment, the divorce decree unambiguously required Malcolm Sawyer to maintain the life insurance policies as they were presently in existence at the time of the divorce. The judgment provides that Malcolm must “maintain the Prudential Life Insurance policies] presently in existence and which insure! ] his life for the benefit of Plaintiff and/or the daughter of the parties.” The court concludes that this language is reasonably susceptible to *845the interpretation that Malcolm had the discretion to designate Patricia Blanchard, Deanna Sawyer, or both as beneficiary. This interpretation, however, is not supported by the language of the judgment.
[¶ 10] The single sentence in question has as its direct object the life insurance policies that were “presently in existence.” The remainder of the sentence describes the policies as those “which insure[ Malcolm’s] life for the benefit of Plaintiff and/or the daughter of the parties.” The use of the present tense of the verb “insure” confirms unambiguously that the policies that Malcolm must maintain are those which presently insure his life for the benefit of Patricia, Deanna, or both. The phrase “for the benefit of Plaintiff and/or the daughter of the parties” is not a grant of discretion to Malcolm to select a beneficiary but is, rather, a description of the life insurance policies that were then in existence. Accordingly, I would vacate that portion of the Superior Court’s judgment dealing with the life insurance proceeds.