Roblin v. Supreme Tent of the Knights of the Maccabees

Citations

• 269 Pa. 139
• 112 A. 70
• 1920 Pa. LEXIS 782

Syllabus

<p>Beneficial associations — Death benefit — Disappearance of beneficiary• — Presumption of death — Payment of dues — By-laws—Unreasonable by-laws — Retrospective—Obligation of contract.</p> <p>1. Where a member of a beneficial association pays all of his dues and assessments, and then disappears, and is not heard of thereafter, he will be presumed, after an absence of seven years, to be dead, and his wife may recover the death benefits due from the association.</p> <p>2. The right of the wife in such a ease is not defeated by two by-laws enacted two years after the member disappeared, one of which provided that ho benefits shall be paid until conclusive proof has been made of a member’s death, “aside from any presumption that might arise by reason of his absence”; and the other provided that membership should be forfeited, if a member absconded, and did not report to the association for one year.</p> <p>3. Such by-laws are unreasonable in character as affecting an outstanding certificate, and especially that of one who has been absent for two years; and this is the case although the certificate provides that the member shall be subject to future by-laws.</p> <p>4. Substantial rights which rest upon contract cannot be abrogated by new by-laws, even where the power to make them has been reserved, unless the right that was changed depended on the bylaws.</p> <p>5. By-laws never operate retrospectively unless the language is such as to admit of no other reasonable construction.</p> <p>6. A by-law enacted in 1911, providing that no suit shall be brought for death benefits within fifteen months from the death of a member, does not apply to a certificate issued in 1902, where it appears that the member disappeared in 1904, and was not thereafter heard of, that in 1918 the orphans’ court decreed a presumption of his death, that suit was brought 'against the association one year after such decree, and that during the period from 1909, when the presumption of death arose, to