96 Ky. 646 | Ky. Ct. App. | 1895
delivered the opinion of the corrRT.
Mrs. Matilda Woodward, deceased, was a member .of tlie United Order of the Golden Cross, a benevo
The certificate of Mrs. Woodward was payable, onelialf to her son, James Woodward, and one-half to Tier friend, Catherine Caudell. In the contest over this fund the court below adjudged the whole of it to the son, and Caudell has appealed.
It is agreed by both sides that the charter of the incorporation and the constitution of the commanderies contain the law by which the fund is to be controlled and the case determined. The former provides that the objects of the order are:
1. “To unite fraternally all acceptable men and women. *
2. “To give all moral and material aid in its power to members. * * .
3. “To establish a benefit fund,-from which a sum, not to exceed two thousand dollars, shall be paid at the death of each member to his or her family, or to be disposed of as he or she may direct.
4. “To establish a fund for the relief of sick and distressed members,” &c.
The constitution provides, among the objects of the order, as follows:
Section 2, of General Law, No. II, under the head of Benefit Certificates, provides thus :
“Applicants shall enter upon the medical examiner’s blank the name or names of the members of their family, or those dependent upon them, to whom they desire their benefit paid, and the same shall be entered in the benefit certificate by the Supreme Keeper of Records.”
Further, in an exhibit purporting to have been filed with Mrs. Caudell’s answer, which is a circular issued by the order, we find among the objects of the order this significant provision:
3. “To establish a benefit fund, from which, on the satisfactory evidence of the death of a member, who has complied with all lawful requirements of the order, .a sum not to exceed two thousand dollars, shall be paid to the benficiaries (members of his or her family), and as contained in the benefit certificate.”
We have thus quoted at length these various provisions with respect to the benefit fund of the order, because it seems to us, they clearly convey but one meaning, and that is, that the beneficiary of the certificate must be one of the member’s family or one dependent on him.
In this respect the objects of the order are in accord
If the law denouncing speculative insurance may be avoided by simply having the insured voluntarily take •out on his life a policy of insurance, payable to his friend, we may soon witness a similar state of case in
As has been well said, such a system of insurance ‘ ‘ is an incitement to murder that is irresitible by persons of large greed and small conscientiousness.” The cases of Basye v. Adams, &c., 81 Ky., 368, and Leaf v. Leaf, 92 Ky., 166, are corroborative of these views.
The contract of insurance, however, is not invalidated by the designation of a person prohibited by law to be a beneficiary. The appellee, a member of the deceased member’s family, is entitled to the fund. (Cook on Life Insurance and Benefit Societies, (1891), page 106; Weigelman v. Bronger, 96 Ky., 132.)
Judgment affirmed.