Harton's Estate

Citations

• 213 Pa. 499
• 62 A. 1058

Syllabus

<p>Beneficial associations — Death benefits — Beneficiaries—“Legal representatives.”</p> <p>Where a foreign beneficial association was chartered “for the mutual protection and relief of the members, and for the payment of stipulated sums of money to the family or heirs of the deceased members of such association,” and a certificate is issued payable to the member’s “legal representatives,” the death benefits are payable upon the member’s death to his heirs at law, although he may have by will given such benefits to certain designated relatives. In such a case it is immaterial that after the certificate was issued the law was changed so that executors, administrators or assigns of deceased members could be made beneficiaries, if it appears that the member survived the change in the law for many years, and never surrendered his original certificate, and accepted a new one containing the names of the substituted beneficiaries.</p>