Irving Bank v. Alexander

Citations

• 280 Pa. 466
• 124 A. 634
• 34 A.L.R. 834
• 1924 Pa. LEXIS 535

Syllabus

<p>Insurance — Life insurance — Widow as beneficiary — Bights of creditors — Fraud—Acts of April 15,1868, P. L. 108; June 1, 1911, P. L. 581; May 5, 1915, P. L. 258, and May 17, 1919, P. L. 207-Constitutional law — Obligation of contracts — Title of act — Notice.</p> <p>1. The law does not prevent an insolvent from carrying insurance for the benefit of his wife, children or other dependent relatives.</p> <p>2. A wife under such circumstances is not merely the nominal beneficiary, but the real one, and this is the case although the right is reserved in the policy to change the person to receive the proceeds of it.</p> <p>3. On the death of the insured, what was an inchoate right in the widow, becomes a fixed vested one concerning a property just brought into existence.</p> <p>4. The proceeds of the policy are the funds that exist only at and after death, created through the happening of the insurance hazard.</p> <p>5. The payment of insurance premiums by an insolvent from funds of his own that in all conscience should go to the creditors, is not such fraud per se as will defeat the right of the widow or children to realize from insurance in their hands.</p> <p>6. The rights reserved in a policy of life insurance to collect a surrender value or to change the beneficiary, if not exercised in the lifetime of the insured, disappear on his death, and do not survive for the benefit of his creditors.</p> <p>7. An insurance policy stands on a footing a little different from physical properties transferred before death by an insolvent to his family in fraud of creditors.</p> <p>8. The policy of the law, even where the rights of creditors may be adversely affected, favors the wife to whom her husband has attempted to secure the benefit of insurance on his life.</p> <p>9. A wife who is named as beneficiary in a policy of life insurance on her husband’s life cannot, by mere consent, in her husband’s lifetime, without naming another beneficiary, and without any assignment, be div