Court Opinion

ID: 9828500
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 18:26:38.966976+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:42:49.834138
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
The questions presented in this case have not been free of difficulty, and in behalf of appellant his able counsel have presented a forceful motion for rehearing. While we think the conclusion reached in our original opinion meets at least the equities of the case and that the motion for rehearing should be overruled, yet we will call attention to the effect, as we construe it, of the assignment of the policy in question made by appellant *545to his wife on June 25, 1927, and which was passed without any emphasis in our original discussion. It is clear that at this time appellant’s wife had an insurable interest in the policy, and the record suggests that the assignment was made to secure funds advanced by the wife to which she had right of control, and we know of no reason why the assignment did not vest in the wife a right to the benefits of the policy. The record discloses that this condition of affairs continued until the decree of divorce. The assignment executed on that day, it is fair to assume, was executed prior to the decree, at a time when the wife’s insurable interest existed. At that time too, as we think the record shows, all premiums for the 20-year period had been paid, and, as it seems to us, the wife became vested with the right to the then existing obligations that were enforceable to have the surrender value paid to her, and we do not think that the mere fact that by the divorce her insurable interest terminated ought to be given the effect of divesting a right fixed, in the wife prior to the decree. It is true that a divorce would prevent any right on the part of the wife to enforce other provisions of the policy, but not, as we think, destroy a right already vested in her.
The motion for rehearing is overruled.